Photography is often touted as the most democratic and accessible medium in the visual arts. Today, the majority of us carry phones equipped with powerful, easy-to-use cameras that capture our lives and the world around us, transforming each of us into a documentarian at a moment’s notice. This omnipresence shapes our understanding of art and culture and often serves as a critical tool for political and social change.

The same is true for a forthcoming exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 transports viewers to the mid-20th century, when the medium rose to prominence not only for artists but also for organizers, activists, and cultural icons. Featuring works by more than 100 photographers, the expansive exhibition ranges from editorial and commercial commissions to self-portraits and mixed-media social critiques. Many of the works push back against the state-sanctioned racism of the Jim Crow era and highlight the acts of protest that emerged from such discrimination.

Included is a graphic collage by Ralph Arnold titled “Above This Earth, Games, Games” that splices cut-outs of football matches with images of war and destruction. Taken that same year, 1968, was Ernest Withers’s captivating shot of Memphis sanitation workers picketing following the death of two employees. Creating a visual wall of signs declaring “I Am A Man,” the strikers in suits and hats demand both better working conditions and dignity and respect.

Cultural touchstones like the enigmatic musician and philosopher Sun Ra also appear. In a dynamic, black-and-white photo by Ming Smith, the jazz leader spins in front of the band, his glittering garb appearing like a halo of brilliant sparks.

Exhibition curators contextualize the show in a quote from Julian Bond, a civil rights leader who helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: “Pictures told, for those who could not see themselves, of the strength and beauty of the people, of the hostility and anger of the opposition, and of the promise of a world free of racism.”

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 is on view from July 25 to November 8 in Jackson.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article The Photographs that Shaped the Black Arts Movement in the Mid-20th Century appeared first on Colossal.

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.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Moffat Takadiwa’s Scrounged Sculptures Confront Africa’s ‘Colonial Hangover’ appeared first on Colossal.

What is prison for? Touted as both a means of punishment and correction, the U.S. carceral system rarely succeeds at the latter. According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,000 people are released from prison annually, with two-thirds being arrested again within three years. Rehabilitation is the purported justification for locking away more of our residents than most other nations, but clearly, the punitive system seldom accomplishes this goal.

A new film by writer Marvin Wade and animator Evan Bode juxtaposes the counterproductive forces of the carceral system with the programs, resources, and true determination that make change possible. Presented by The New York Times‘ Opinion section, “Prison and Time” details Wade’s experience while incarcerated and how, despite the system’s rules and the whims of correctional officers, he was able to obtain his GED, learn to facilitate conflict resolution, and discover his love for writing. Time, for Wade, was the critical support he needed to gain perspective, while the system he found himself ensnared by focused on dehumanization and retribution.

For his part, Bode animated a dark, dizzying visualization that evokes the bleak and claustrophobic conditions of a prison cell and the lives it both conceals and actively thwarts. The scenes rendered in watercolor and marker appear as blips within the larger narrative, an apt material metaphor that moves the viewer throughout the film like a ticking clock. A making-of video highlights this painstaking process.

Bode and Wade met through Project Mend, a journal featuring the work of creatives impacted by the carceral system published through Syracuse University. “Mend is a very small, tight-knit group doing extraordinary things with a lot of love,” Bode says. “Last year, [the project’s founder] Patrick W. Berry presented me with some texts published in Mend for me to consider animating, one of which was Marvin Wade’s brilliant essay, ‘Time and Prison: Are They Mutually Exclusive?‘”

The two teamed up, with Wade narrating and Bode animating. Together, they create a captivating portal into Wade’s life at a particularly vulnerable and transformative time. “I believe the purpose of an artist is to move the crowd,” he writes about the film. “And my hope is that everyone watching our film will be moved in some way.”

Project Mend has tapped Bode for further collaborations, including an animated film paired with the poem “Man Skin Boy Mask” by José Angel Perez. Keep an eye out for its release on Vimeo.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Poetic Short Film Animates the Counterproductive Forces of Incarceration appeared first on Colossal.

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.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article LR Vandy’s Rope Sculptures Disentangle Histories of Colonialism and Transportation appeared first on Colossal.

Censorship and book bans are on the rise worldwide, prompting growing concerns about access to information and free expression. Although this trajectory is increasingly worrisome, it isn’t new, as artist Xiaoze Xie reflects on his exhibition In the Name of the Book.

Comprising paintings and life-sized porcelain sculptures, the show encompasses works made in the early 1990s through the present day, all of which reflect on the vital role books play in cultural, political, and social life. Xie’s practice is largely informed by his upbringing in China—he was born in Guangdong the same year as the Cultural Revolution— and in 1989, he witnessed the deadly Tiananmen Square protests. After moving to the U.S. in 1993, he began to incorporate this history and concerns about such restrictions into his works as a form of protest.

Book banning, particularly in the U.S., can sometimes be framed as a novel issue, and part of Xie’s effectiveness is that he connects the rise in modern-day censorship to what occurred centuries before. The Forbidden Books Series interprets classic novels, plays, and more that were prohibited largely throughout the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). Fiction like The Golden Lotus and Water Margin, for example, were charged with being sexually explicit and obscene, while the Chinese government barred the theatrical production The Peony Pavilion from leaving Shanghai for a New York performance in 1998 because of its “feudal, superstitious, and pornographic” qualities.

While these works are well-known cases of censorship, Xie points out that they’re just a sampling of a much larger problem. He writes:

Over the last 2,000 years, the books that have disappeared in China because of prohibition are countless. There is no trace of them anymore; all I have found is a small fraction. All of these old paper stacks, these silent books, consist of thoughts and discourses. These invisible and shapeless things and the stories behind them—the complicated contexts of philosophical, religious, political, historical, social, ethical, and racial issues—are gone. The history of banning books is a process of challenging repeated oppression and control, and challenging it again. It is alongside this back-and-forth repetition, I think, that history slowly marches on.

Preserving their likeness in porcelain with pages splayed out flat is an act of defiance for the artist, as he presents these otherwise concealed texts as permanently open for public consumption.

In the Name of the Book is on view through April 17 at Sapar Contemporary. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Xiaoze Xie Preserves a Growing Collection of Banned Books in Porcelain appeared first on Colossal.

We’re thrilled to invite you all to the Chicago premiere of Paint Me a Road Out of Here, the award-winning documentary from Aubin Pictures directed by Catherine Gund.

Along with Intuit Art Museum and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at DePaul University, Colossal is co-hosting a screening of the film followed by a conversation between film participant Leah Faria and our editorial director Grace Ebert on March 25. This event is free to attend, but seating is limited.

Featuring artists Faith Ringgold and Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Paint Me a Road Out of Here uncovers the whitewashed history of Ringgold’s masterpiece, “For the Women’s House,” following its 50-year journey from Rikers Island jail to the Brooklyn Museum.

Read our coverage of the documentary, watch the trailer, and RSVP to save your seat.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Join Us for the Chicago Premiere of ‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here’ appeared first on Colossal.

From the nearly abstracted patterns featuring dozens of Black faces in the meticulous work of Sharon Kerry-Harlan to portraits inspired by real events like Donna Chambers’ celebration of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories at Claire Oliver Gallery spotlights remarkable narratives in fabric.

The exhibition draws from the collection of Carolyn Mazloomi, founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network, whose strategy over the better part of the last four decades has been to highlight the craft as an artistic expression beyond what the gallery describes as “folk curiosity.” Works simultaneously function “as fine art, historical archive, and cultural testimony, asserting once and for all that Black quiltmaking deserves a central place in the American art canon,” says a statement.

The 12 artists included in the show reference a range of perspectives and stories, from childhood memories to the COVID-19 pandemic to civil rights actions like the Freedom Train. “Black American quilts occupy a singular position in the history of American art: they are simultaneously an intimate domestic practice and a form of public witness,” the gallery says. “For generations, these textiles carried stories that could not always be spoken aloud of family, faith, resistance, grief, and joy.”

Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories continues through August 8 in Harlem. You might also enjoy Stephen Towns’ quilted paintings celebrating midcentury leisure in the South and Bisa Butler’s vibrant stitched portraits.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Masters of the Stitch: Threaded Stories’ Spotlights Narrative Quilts by Black Americans appeared first on Colossal.