From dusky woodland scenes to fantastical landscapes populated by mythical creatures, Shannon Taylor’s vibrant dioramas spring to life inside vintage cosmetic compacts. Sourced from flea markets, vintage shops, friends, and anywhere else they might appear, the vessels themselves are often brimming with character, but they let on little about what resides inside. Tiny mermaids, unicorns, and a range of flora and fauna made with watercolor on paper beckon us into a Polly Pocket-sized realm.

In addition to the inclusion of her work in Common Waters at Arch Enemy Arts, Taylor is preparing for a solo exhibition titled Minor Mending at Modern Eden in San Francisco, which opens on August 6. She also curated a show at the Oakland Museum of California titled Fairyland @ 75: A Legacy of Magic, organized on behalf of Children’s Fairyland, where she is Director of Art and Restoration. The show continues through the end of the summer. See more on Taylor’s Instagram.

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When Moffat Takadiwa sees a pile of rubbish—old technology parts, personal care items, clothing—he doesn’t just see a bunch of junk. The Harare, Zimbabwe-based artist has spent the better part of two decades collecting thousands upon thousands of pieces of plastic and metals foraged from landfills near the city’s Mbare neighborhood, where heaps of electronic equipment waste, also known as e-waste, ends up in illicit dump sites. In his studio, vast collections of colorful objects are meticulously sorted into collections.

Takadiwa is known for his elaborate sculptures made from what he describes as “everyday consumer residue”—discarded computer keyboard keys, toothbrush heads, plastic combs, buttons, and more. The colors, textures, and patina of wear and age produce patterns that it’s tempting to describe as “organic,” even though the materials are the opposite.

The artist’s current solo exhibition, The Crown! at Semiose, highlights the tension not only between visual harmony, consumer culture, and waste but also those of what curator Fernanda Brenner describes in the exhibition essay as “the tensions of Africa’s post-colonial afterlife.” Takadiwa describes it as the “colonial hangover.” For instance, afro combs appear throughout the show, “rooted in African traditions and the colonial self-fashioning they forced,” Brenner says. “Once tools for grooming and ritual, these combs now bear the weight of resistance and pride in Black political life.”

Takadiwa’s compositions drape, tapestry-like, with repetitive patterns and textures that alternate between softness and brittleness. From the distance, the details of unique components blur into a fabric-like substrate, but upon closer inspection, nail polish brushes, caps, and keyboard keys in various states of aged yellowing emerge as individual tributes to overconsumption and excess. “The result is beautiful, which is where the trouble begins,” Brenner writes. She continues:

If beauty could settle old scores, the art world would have solved more than it has…Rearranging the materials does not erase their origins. If you have ever pressed ‘delete’ and believed the problem was gone, his work offers a quiet correction. Nothing disappears; it only travels, usually to places like Mbare, where Takadiwa opened his artist-run space in what used to be a colonial beer hall.

The Crown! continues through May 16 in Paris. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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In the little town of Kosciusko, Mississippi, a self-described “unusual artist” named L.V. Hull transformed her home and garden of three-and-a-half decades into an elaborate, continuous artwork. Through found objects and trinkets, paint, and glue she purchased at the local Walmart, the artist created an immersive art environment—a riot of color, patterns, and textures in which creativity merged with daily living.

Many of Hull’s works are currently on view in the show Love Is a Sensation at the Mississippi Museum of Art, which celebrates the self-taught artist’s eclectic approach to materials and space. From vibrantly painted everyday objects to idiosyncratic assemblages, Hull’s creativity and penchant for collecting knew no bounds.

“Hull merged art-making and the Southern art of ‘visiting’ to craft a creative practice that allowed her to commune with her inner spirit, her Creator, her community, and visitors from around the state, region, and world,” says a statement.

As a Black woman from a small Southern community, working within a genre often referred to as folk art, the artist worked outside of the mainstream art world. And like many minorities—especially in rural places—her practice is among those that have been marginalized within the canon, “resulting in an incomplete account of American creativity and art history,” the museum says. Love Is a Sensation spotlights Hull’s contributions to not only the creative legacy of the South but the tradition of artist-built environments.

Love Is a Sensation continues through June 14 in Jackson, and it also marks the advent of the new L.V. Hull Legacy Center, which is slated to open to the public this summer. You might also enjoy Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project in Detroit, plus Jo Farb Hernández’s forthcoming book, Architectural Fantasies, which is slated for release on April 14.

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For millennia, humans have navigated seas, rivers, and oceans as avenues for trade, exploration, conquest, and colonization. During the Age of Discovery—an era interwoven with what’s known as the Age of Sail—European explorers and traders embarked on journeys around the world to map previously uncharted continents, trade commodities, and establish new socio-political outposts. Imperial forces competed with one another to control as much as they could, all in the name of wealth and power, and individual landowners and traders profited immensely. But sustaining a presence in far-flung places would never have been remotely possible, nevertheless successful, without slavery.

Well into the 19th century, humans were transported through a vast slave network, with millions crammed aboard ships bound for various parts of Europe or North America. For London-based artist LR Vandy, the layered and often fraught legacies of labor, shipping, and trade undergird a distinctive sculptural practice.

Vandy’s studio is based at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent, where the history of wooden ships is alive and well. She uses materials such as Manila rope—a thick nautical rope made from the abaca plant, which is native to The Philippines—bobbers, navigation equipment, ship’s helms, hull-shaped wooden forms, and more, to explore the tangles of maritime history.

Vandy’s exhibition titled Rise, in The Weston Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, marks the artist’s first solo museum show. Many of the works seen here are included in the show, while others represent earlier pieces. In her most recent work, the rope is a central focus as she explores its “entanglement in human
history, its role in the development of civilisations, and its inextricable links to colonial enslavement of people,” says an exhibition statement. Everyday objects are repurposed and manipulated in an ongoing inquiry into process and materials, especially “drawing attention to the social, economic and political systems embedded within everyday objects.”

Anchoring the space at Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a giant, rope-covered form evocative of a maypole, nodding to historic European folk traditions that celebrate community, ritual, and regeneration. Other objects appear to spin or sway, as if skirts are swishing or invisible players move through a series of games. “My practice centres the hidden human costs of colonialism, transportation systems and commodities, and the knotted histories of trade and power they contain,” Vandy says in a statement. “The title, Rise, references ideas of resilience, protest, liberation, and collective joy explored through rituals and dance.”

Rise continues through September 13 in Wakefield. If you go, also see Nicola Turner’s dramatic exhibition, Time’s Scythe. Learn more and plan your visit on the park’s website, and follow Vandy on Instagram for updates.

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