Posts from the “Exhibitions” Category

Jared Soares: Small-Town Hip Hop

Posted on November 12, 2018

Oxygen Elements and Skinny in Roanoke, Virginia. © Jared Soares

In 2008, photographer Jared Soares travelled to Roanoke, a small town located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Hailing from Shawnee, Kansas, he set out to connect with his new surroundings through his love of hip hop.

“I didn’t know anyone in Roanoke, and there were these corner stores where you could buy three CDs for five dollars: one would be someone like Lil Wayne, and the other two would be local artists,” Soares recalls.

“I bought a few and started calling numbers. I got a hold of Terrence Palmer, a graphic designer who did the artwork for everyone’s mixtape. I told him what I was interested in doing and he invited me to come down to have a chat. His design studio was a hub of activity, with rappers and local producers coming through. It was a great place to meet people in person.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Zulu and Ox around town and Ox’s apartment in Terrace Apartments in Roanoke Tuesday night. © Jared Soares

Raw Sole Records Presents VA Is For Rappers at the Front Row in Roanoke, Virginia Saturday March 18, 2017. © Jared Soares

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Music

Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950

Posted on November 7, 2018

Untitled, New York, 1950. The Gordon Parks Foundation. Photography by Gordon Parks, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a singular figure in every sense of the word, transcending every boundary foisted upon him as a black man coming of age in Jim Crow America. Now, Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950, a new exhibition in Washington, looks back at the groundbreaking first decade of his career, during which he rose to become the first African-American photographer at LIFE magazine.

Hailing from Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks decided to become a photographer while working as a waiter in a railroad dining car and looking through discarded copies of magazines like Vogue and Look. At the age of 25, Parks purchased a Voigtländer Brilliant, which he later called his “choice of weapon”, and taught himself to become a professional portrait photographer and photojournalist.

“Having a camera gave him access to tell different stories,” says Dr Deborah Willis, who wrote an essay titled ‘Gordon Parks: Haute Couture and the Everyday’ for the exhibition catalogue published by Steidl.

“We have to keep in mind that at the time, black people didn’t have that sense of freedom to walk into spaces and expect the respect that he received. That’s what I find fascinating about Gordon: the boundaries weren’t there for him. He understood that he had an eye. He believed in his sense of understanding of the depths and complexities of life that he wanted to pursue work and develop the work.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Untitled, Chicago, 1950. The Gordon Parks Foundation. Photography by Gordon Parks, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Categories: AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Anthony Friedkin: The Surfing Essay

Posted on November 6, 2018

At the tender age of eight, Anthony Friedkin discovered what would become the two greatest passions of his life: photography and surfing. Growing up in Los Angeles, Friedkin enjoyed weekends and summers at the family beach house in Malibu, where he developed an unquenchable love for the ocean.

In 1970, at the age of 21, Friedkin began The Surfing Essay, a visual diary of his life as a member of California’s celebrated surf scene – a project that has continued for more than 45 years. After a near-death accident two years ago, Friedkin decided to organise the work into an exhibition and book.

Now, a selection of 50 hand-printed black and white photographs will be on show at Anthony Friedkin: The Surfing Essay, opening November 8 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York. The consummate insider, Friedkin delved beneath the Hollywood stereotype of the blonde, bronzed Adonis to reveal the extremely individualistic athletes who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of the perfect wave. Here, he shares his journey of discovery, celebration, and triumph over circumstance.

Read the Fill Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Kimberly M. Jenkins: Fashion and Race

Posted on November 6, 2018

An image by Stevens Añazco featured in Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Restructuring Identitiesvia @stevensanazco

When Vogue Italia published the ‘all black’ issue in July 2008, it asked: “Is Fashion Racist?” In the decade since, the question has come to the fore countless times, demanding investigation, critique, and, ultimately, dismantlement.

Inspired by the conversation the question posed, Kimberly M. Jenkins, a fashion educator and independent researcher, began developing an academic initiative. It began with the course “Fashion and Race”, which she has taught at the New School’s Parsons School of Design since Autumn 2016. “The first thing we do in the class is to go about discussing what race, systemic oppression, and white privilege are to set up the terms we will be relying upon in order to look at how the construction of race has shaped fashion and beauty industries,” Jenkins explains.

Driven to bring her vision to the public, Jenkins created The Fashion and Race Database Project, an online archive filled with vital source materials. Now, as part of the third and final phase of the project, Jenkins has curated Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities, a group exhibition of student and graduate work, which runs until 11 November.

The artists featured in the show confront and subvert racism to assert their vision and claim their space as people of colour navigating worlds of fashion and beauty. In How to Be Black, Avery Youngblood, a ‘Beyoncé Formation Scholar’, simulates a ‘how-to’ guide,’ recording the everyday life of a young, multidimensional black woman, while Jamilla Okubo created Hair as Identity, a zine that explores preconceived notions of black hair. Kyemah McEntyre presents her dashiki prom gown, which went viral in 2015. Jenkins also organised a free film screening of The Gospel According to André, followed by a Q&A with André Leon Talley and director Kate Novack. Here, Jenkins speaks about how the next generation of artists are becoming the change they want to see in the world.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography

Posted on November 2, 2018

John M. Valadez, Brooklyn and Soto, from the East Los Angeles Urban Portrait Portfolio, ca. 1978

In the years following World War II, America’s Latinx communities were becoming increasingly marginalised and misrepresented. The Latinx immigrants joined African Americans who fled the South during the Great Migration, one of the largest, most rapid movements in history. Cities became the point of arrival for millions of migrants, who entered into established communities where their cultures took root, such as Spanish Harlem, the South Bronx, and East Los Angeles.

Many of their stories have largely gone untold, and E. Carmen Ramos, Smithsonian American Art Museum’s deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art, aims to correct this. In Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography, Ramos has organised the work of 10 Latinx photographers – Manuel Acevedo, Oscar Castillo, Frank Espada, Anthony Hernandez, Perla de Leon, Hiram Maristany, Ruben Ochoa, John Valadez, Winston Vargas, and Camilo José Vergara – who documented their communities as insiders.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

John M. Valadez, Couple Balam, from the East Los Angeles Urban Portrait Portfolio, ca. 1978

Camilo José Vergara, 65 East 125th Street, Harlem, 1977

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Mike Miller: California Love

Posted on October 18, 2018

Tupac, 1994. © Mike Miller

A fourth generation native of Los Angeles, photographer and director Mike Miller has been repping the West Side since the early ’70s. His story reads like a Hollywood film: a young upstart who went on to find his calling in art – with no less than supermodel Linda Evangelista gifting him his first camera, a Nikon F2, formerly owned by Peter Lindbergh.

Yet it’s not the gloss of high fashion for which Miller is best known. Instead, it’s the grit, glory and glamour of the LA hip hop scene – a legacy that’s being celebrated in new exhibition California Love, currently on view at M+B Photo in Los Angeles.

Growing up in Hollywood, Miller and his brothers got into enough trouble for his mother to pack the family up and head out to Santa Monica when he was 12. Living on the beach changed his life. “I wanted to be a director, with no clue how to get there,” he recalls. “Some of my neighbours were big producers and they put me on at Warner Brothers and Fox Studios when they started as 20th Century Fox. My friends from the beach were 50, 60 years old and I was like 15 but they were my bros. We connected on different levels because back in the day, that’s the way it was.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Amazing Grace, 2011. © Mike Miller

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Music, Photography

Guadalupe Rosales: Legends Never Die, A Collective Memory

Posted on October 15, 2018

Photographer unknown, Mind Crime Hookers party crew on 6th Street Bridge, Boyle Heights, 1993. Courtesy Guadalupe Rosales.

“The word legend means to create stories we have to tell,” observes Chicanx artist Guadalupe Rosales. “When I think about my ancestors, this is something that has passed on as someone who is Mexican. We keep these people and loved ones close to us through their stories and legends.”

Passing down stories, traditions, and hard-won lessons from one generation to the next, Rosales has built a vernacular archive of ’90s Chicanx culture and history – selections of which are currently on view in Legends Never Die, A Collective Memory at Aperture Gallery, New York, as well as in Los Angeles (Aperture Magazine, Fall 2018).

Her story begins when, at the age of eight, Rosales and her family moved to a home in East Los Angeles that faced The Boulevard, a historic street where teens had been linking up since the ’60s. Rosales fondly recalls, “hanging out, watching from the window when I was 11 or 12 before I was allowed to do these things – and seeing the beautiful cars, the men and women getting to know each other, exchanging phone numbers. As I got older and was able to go out that was something that got passed down to me and my sisters.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photographer unknown, Guadalupe Rosales’s cousin, Ever Sanchez (right), and unidentified woman, East Los Angeles, 1995

Shrine to Ever Sanchez, Guadalupe Rosales’s studio, 2018; Photograph by Mike Slack for Aperture

Categories: 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred

Posted on October 15, 2018

Seventh (2018) © Lina Iris Viktor, Courtesy the Artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

When British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor enrolled in college in the United States, she was confronted with the subject of race and identity in a manner she had never considered prior to coming to America. “I realised what it meant to be Black in the US, and experienced the cultural realities that came with it,” Viktor tells AnOther.

Charged with the desire to examine her roots and explore her heritage, Viktor discovered an inextricable link in Pan-African history that has become the very heart of the new exhibition, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred, now on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Here, Viktor looks back to the founding of Liberia, Africa’s first and oldest modern republic. Established in 1822 by the American Colonization Society, Liberia was originally imagined as a conduit for the resettlement of free-born and formerly enslaved Black Americans in the early days of the abolitionist movement.

Artists and writers of the era seized the figure of the “Libyan Sibyl,” a prophetess from classical antiquity who foretold of tragedy, and recast her in the image of activist and freed slave Sojourner Truth – a symbol Viktor embraces throughout this series of glorious large-scale self-portraits exquisitely gilded with 24-carat gold. Here, Viktor shares her journey across time and space, reclaiming the lost narratives that demand to be told.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Categories: Africa, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Deana Lawson

Posted on October 10, 2018

Deana Lawson, Oath , 2013; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Deana Lawson’s photographs embody the realm of myth, a space where the divine and mortal realms merge. They centre around the subjects of family, spirituality, sexuality, and intimacy within the black experience, in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. She credits Carrie Mae Weems and Renee Cox for piquing her interest in documenting issues of race and identity, as well as cultivating a nuanced conversation around black aesthetic in both art and daily life.

Now living in Brooklyn, Lawson draws inspiration from everything – from vintage nudes, juke joints and acrylic nails, to fried fish, lace curtains, the Notorious B.I.G. and thrift shops. Her large-scale photographs are extremely formalist and meticulously staged, but they’re also profoundly intimate studies of black life around the globe today.

Her first monograph, Deana Lawson (Aperture), presents 40 key works made over the past decade in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. A selection of 13 photographs and a new film will be on view in Deana Lawson, the new exhibition opening at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles on October 12, 2018.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Deana Lawson, Nikki’s Kitchen , 2015; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Frances F. Denny: Major Arcana – Witches in America

Posted on October 8, 2018

When visual artist Frances F. Denny began to research her family lineage five years ago, she came across a shocking discovery: her eighth great-grandmother, Mary Bliss Parsons was accused of witchcraft while living in Northampton, MA, in 1674.

“I was researching my ancestry for my first book, Let Virtue Be Your Guide, and found a document my father had made outlining his side of our family tree,” Denny tells Broadly.

One historic account noted that Parsons, who came from a “good family” and had a large brood of children, was accused of practicing witchcraft by a woman who wanted to have children but was unable to get pregnant. Although Parsons was acquitted of the charges and lived into her 80s, her reputation never recovered.

Less then two decades after Parsons stood trial in Boston, the practice of bearing false witness rose to a fevered pitch during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 – 1693. Over 200 people were accused; fourteen women and five men were found guilty and hanged under the auspice of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall – who in a twist of fate, Denny learned was her tenth great-grandfather.

Read the Full Story at Broadly

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

John Waters: Indecent Exposure

Posted on October 5, 2018

John Waters is a master of paradox, bridging the divide between seeming opposition with love, wit, and nerve. At 72, the Pope of Trash continues to storm the world with Indecent Exposure, his first art retrospective opening October 7 at the Baltimore Museum of Art in America and, on this side of the pond, with This Filthy World, his one-man show headlining Homotopia at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on November 10.

Indecent Exposure features more than 160 photographs, sculptures, soundworks, and video made since the 1990s around themes including pop culture, the movie business, childhood and identity, self-portraits, sex and transgression, and contemporary art. Here, sacred cows are led to the slaughter, tenderised, and barbecued by a loving heart that embraces the absurd in every element of the work.

With 16 films and eight books under his belt, Waters brings his love for writing and editing to the visual realm and discovered that the “perfect moments” are often accidental and failed. “What works best in the art world is sometimes what works the opposite of perfect in the movie world,” Waters reveals. “In the movie world it has to be in focus, you have to hit your mark, it has to be lit well, which is what I want. In the art world, I make mistakes as I learn. The low tech, catch-as-you-can photography that I do is failed photographing in the beginning of fine art photography.”

Waters brings this same spirit to the spoken word, a practice that he began in the late 1960s when he and Divine first began showing films at colleges. Over the years, Waters has transformed what began as a vaudeville skit into a perfectly honed monologue, tailored to the time and place of his performance – while maintaining his fascination with true crime, fashion gone wild, art world extremism, and exploitation films in a joyous celebration of trashy goodness. Here, Another Man directs 50 questions to this countercultural icon; the Pope of Trash and the Baron of Bad Taste.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

John Waters, Divine in Ecstasy,1992. Collection of Amy and Zachary Lehman. © John Waters, Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography