McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC
September 14–December 2, 2017

The San Francisco–based artist-baker Leah Rosenberg inaugurated McColl Center's project space with Color for the People, a site-specific exploration of color and taste.

Rosenberg’s process begins with a daily routine of observing colors outdoors and capturing them with her smartphone camera. Each week, she selected a color from Charlotte’s landscape and applied it to the gallery walls and furniture to create an immersive color-field painting and meditative space. To deepen visitors’ sensory engagement with her project, Rosenberg hosted a series of “Color Bar” events over the course of her residency: on selected Thursday evenings, she served cocktails and treats to match the color of the week, encouraging the public to reflect on the relationships between experiences of color, flavor, and people.

Rosenberg’s influences include the artist and pioneering color theorist Josef Albers. A German refugee who fled Nazi occupation and immigrated to the United States, Albers taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1933 to 1949, and his teachings on color became metaphors for life. “In an age in which increased human sensibility has become such an obvious need in all areas of human involvement, color sensitivity and awareness can constitute a major weapon against forces of insensitivity and brutalization,” said Albers. His art was about human relationships as much as it was about aesthetics. [1] Today, amid growing social tensions and extreme xenophobia, Rosenberg’s Color for the People intended to create space for remembering the vital roles that color (and food) continue to play in shaping our consciousness and in fostering shared experiences of pleasure and joy, which are, as Rosenberg says, “medicine for times like these.”

Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA
April 27–September 18, 2016

The Grace Jones Project explores the influence of model, actress, and singer Grace Jones. The exhibition brings together more than twenty works by an intergenerational group of artists working primarily in photography, video, and performance. Some artists pay direct tribute to Jones while others demonstrate a Jones-like sensibility in their engagement with the black body and queer identity.

Central to the exhibition are vintage album covers and performance videos that highlight the music and stage personae that made Jones a cultural icon, and one of the most important performers to emerge in the late twentieth century. Featuring works from Rashayla Marie Brown, Gerard Gaskin, Heather Hart, Lyle Ashton Harris, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Narcissister, Harold Offeh, Jacolby Satterwhite, Xaviera Simmons, Cauleen Smith, and Mickalene Thomas.

Press: Artforum, Bay Area Reporter, KQED, Hyperallergic, Little Magazine, SF Weekly

Artwork: Harold Offeh, Arabesque, Covers: Arabesque, After Grace Jones, 1978 (video still), 2008-2009; Gerard Gaskin, Gisele, Latex Ball, Manhattan, NY, 2008. Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 inches; Rashayla Marie Brown, The Island Pose, 2013. From the Black Betty series. Photo on masonite, 24 x 36 inches. All images courtesy of the artists.

The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE
January 14–March 25, 2017

Alexandria Smith explores the transformative girlhood experiences that shape the women we become as she illuminates the complexities of Black identity. Try a Little Tenderness presents Smith’s paintings and collages in which she obsessively deconstructs images of the female body. Legs, hands, and pigtails, for instance, become characters and landscapes—a topography of the artist’s psyche. Although her abstract tableaux have been interpreted as performances or aftermaths of violence, they actually represent bodies in flux: not-quite-adolescent girls beginning to develop senses of themselves as independent from the environments they inhabit. Collectively, they tell a mythical coming-of-age story that centers on the mental and emotional processes of self-discovery. 

With the title of this exhibition, Smith refers to Otis Redding’s best-selling track that implores men to show caring toward women. Many have found deeper meaning in Redding’s lyrics, believing that he was also singing about women’s class struggles and heteronormative values that equate womanhood to ideals of beauty and male companionship. Smith’s art conjures up these different interpretations while tethering Redding’s song to the present: the phrase “try a little tenderness” is Smith’s call for greater human compassion in response to violent acts on Black bodies. Her exhibition creates a space for remembering, in her words, “the humanity of Black women and girls” and “every woman’s capacity to give and receive intimacy."

Smith is recipient of the first annual Wanda D. Ewing Commission, which supports the production and presentation of new work by a woman artist of the African diaspora.* Wanda Denise Ewing (1970–2013), the Omahan artist for whom The Union's gallery is named, was influenced by folk-art aesthetics, craft traditions, and the limited depictions of Black women in Western art history and popular culture. Through her art, she celebrated Black bodies and explored the complex interplay of race, gender, and sexuality. The commission was established to carry forth Ewing’s legacy and to create a vital cultural opportunity for Greater Omaha, where narratives of Black female experience are too often absent from the arts discourse.  —Nicole J. Caruth

Photos: Dana Damewood

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
February 4–May 14, 2016

Multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams presents the third iteration of his ongoing radio station project. At the Bemis Center, the radio station is attached to a life-size, interactive game board. Comparable to musical chairs, the game calls for visitors to move across the board to the beat of the music, which includes selections from jazz, blues, rock, classical, R&B, rap, and pop. When the music stops, the deejay/game host poses questions about historical facts gathered from library books as well as from residents of Omaha. Using the space of the exhibition, Adams aims to temporarily dissolve cultural boundaries of knowledge that may separate one person from another. Visit the project Tumblr: www.crossroadradio.tumblr.com.
 

Images courtesy the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Photographer: Colin Conces

McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC
September 14–December 2, 2017

The Los Angeles–based artist Rodrigo Valenzuela constructs scenes and narratives that point to the tensions between individuals and the societies in which they live. Much of Valenzuela’s work addresses the experiences of undocumented immigrants and laborers. In his most recent series of paintings, entitled New Land, the artist considers the ideology of Manifest Destiny—a nineteenth-century belief in the inherent superiority of white European-Americans and their predetermined fortune to conquer North America—as well as the failures of the Homestead Acts that quickened the settlement of public land west of the Mississippi River. Valenzuela’s images of barren desert landscapes, the iconographic American West, invoke both these ideas of expansion and opportunity as well as painful histories of erasure that resonate with present-day debates on immigration, border control, gentrification, and climate change.

Valenzuela creates his landscapes by transferring printing toner onto raw canvas, a laborious process made evident by the wear and tear of the material. For the artist, this technique mimics that of photocopies and is a metaphor for the arduous bureaucratic procedures that immigrants must endure. The artist has first-hand experience of this as he emigrated from Chile to Canada and then to the United States. For many years, Valenzuela worked in the construction industry, a background often reflected in his installation materials, such as drywall and scaffolding, and in his videos. In the New Land works, references to architecture and interior spaces are superimposed on the landscapes, taking the form of lines and boxes that the artist describes as “transition zones” and “structures built out of desire.”

In three videos projected in a converted artist studio, Valenzuela continues to interlace strands of his personal history. From behind the camera, the artist directs day laborers and domestic workers that he hired in cities, such as Seattle and Omaha, to share their stories of immigration. As they discuss opportunities and self-determination, and touch on feelings of fear and isolation, their voices echo both the promise and the limitations of the American Dream.  —Nicole J. Caruth

Photos include: New Land No. 5, 2017. Toner, acrylic, chalk on canvas, 50 x 70 inches | New Land No. 10, 2017; Toner, acrylic, chalk on canvas; 96 x 74 inches. | Maria TV, 2014. HD digital video with audio (in Spanish with English subtitles). Running Time: 17 minutes, 15 seconds. Edition: 5 + artist proof. Courtesy the artist and Upfor Gallery.

McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC
January 27–March 25, 2017
 

"Mirror was a provocative and upsetting exhibit, essential viewing to those who value a just society." —Creative Loafing
 

The World is a Mirror of My Freedom was organized in response to the increasingly visible violence against Black bodies in the United States. Since 2012, people across the country have protested the killings of Black boys and men—often at the hands of police—and the systems that uphold violence and oppression. The stories of the recently deceased (including Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Keith Lamont Scott, to name only a few) have become synonymous with a social movement and the era. Bringing together works from five of McColl Center’s current and alumni artists-in-residence (AIR), this exhibition offers some answers to these questions: How are artists aesthetically addressing these recurring tragedies and the traumatic spectacle of lifeless Black bodies? How are the public outcries for justice and change mirrored in art, now? 

This exhibition takes as its starting point Intergalactic Soul, a multimedia project by the Charlottean artist duo Marcus Kiser and Jason Woodberry (2016–17 AIR). Begun in response to the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Intergalactic Soul combines the artists’ mutual love of comic books, science fiction, and hip-hop music with their perspectives on the plight of Black American men. Works by the artists Shaun Leonardo (2010 AIR), Dread Scott (2013 AIR), and Charles E. Williams (2015 AIR) further examine race and power, linking contemporary media and movements to histories of tyranny and resistance.

Artists have long addressed racial injustice, articulating their struggles and hopes as they hold up a mirror to society. “An artist's duty is to reflect the times,” said the singer and civil-rights activist Nina Simone, some fifty years ago. Simone’s words remain relevant, resonating with this exhibition and the political climate: “At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved . . . We will shape and mold this country, or it will not be molded and shaped at all.” As we cross the threshold into a new presidency, let us remember what artists and art can do when our lives feel endangered or devalued: bear witness to human experience and reassert our full humanity. —Nicole J. Caruth

Interpretive Materials: Talking About Race + Power: Resources for Children and Adults

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
February 4–May 14, 2016

In September 2012, the American filmmaker and writer Benjamin Tiven visited the video archives of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) in Nairobi. KBC was the national television network from 1964 until 1989. Its collected video and film materials are historic but are not cataloged according to any official mandate for accuracy or completeness, and the collection is not open to the public. Much of its holdings are deteriorating or are in outmoded media formats that require equipment the station no longer has. Over the years, various governmental agencies have permanently withdrawn selections of footage to satisfy ulterior agendas. Despite the technical lapses and omissions, KBC’s archive represents an original effort by a state to fashion its image and to legitimate its power through control of visual mass media. Everyday Static Transmissions featured the film that emerged from Tiven’s visit, A Third Version of the Imaginary, and a suite of related photographs.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
August 6–October 10, 2015

In their ongoing series of projects that use fruit as a material to investigate culture and explore social engagement, Los Angeles–based art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) created a discursive exhibition about the history of Omaha. The artists took the apple as their focus, probing its rich symbolism and regional provenance, dating back to the Oregon Trail.

During a research trip to Omaha in April of 2015, Fallen Fruit began to mine the Great Plains Black History Museum collection  that was being temporarily stored at the Bemis Center. “As we opened boxes, some of them molded from years of dampness, the objects began to construct a complex picture about the things we leave behind,” said Fallen Fruit. “In time, the objects that once held meaning to us are rediscovered by others, telling them intimate stories about people and place.”  

Continuing their research, Fallen Fruit visited the Joslyn Museum, El Museo Latino, the Phillip Schrager Collection of Contemporary Art, and Omaha Public Library. The artists gathered an eclectic mix of borrowed books, letters, tchotchkes, domestic objects, and works of art — including pieces from Bemis Center’s collection of artworks by past artists-in-residence — and assembled them against the backdrop of their signature fruit-themed wallpaper. 

Images courtesy the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Photographer: Colin Conces. Video by Clark Creative. 

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. Since 2013, Burns and Young have continued the collaboration. Urban Fruit Trails was organized in conjunction with the exhibition Fallen Fruit: Power of People, Power of Place.

Urban Fruit Trails invites the public to explore urban space through a network of apple trees that form a series of walking trails. Planted along sidewalks and interstitial urban spaces, the pathway of the apple trees aims to connect Omaha neighborhoods from north to south. Bilingual signage (Spanish and English) placed at each tree reads: “These fruit trees belong to the public. They are for everyone, including you. Please take care of the fruit trees. When the fruit is ripe, taste it and share it with others. This apple tree is ripe in September/October.”

PLANTING SITES
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, 68102
Gene Leahy Mall, corner of 13th & Farnam, 68102
Joslyn Art Museum, 2200 Dodge St., 68102
Liberty School, 2021 St Marys Ave, 68102
Siena/Francis House, 1702 Nicholas St, 68102
North Star Foundation, 4242 N 49th Ave, 68104
Carver Bank, 2416 Lake Street, 68111
Long School Neighborhood Association, 2123 N. 27th Street, 68111
Malcolm X Foundation, 3448 Evans St, 68111
Neighborhood Action and Facts Community Garden, 25th & Manderson Street, 68111
South Omaha YMCA/Intercultural Senior Center, 3010 R St., 68107
Gifford Park, 3416 Cass Street, 68131

Urban Fruit Trails Omaha was organized in collaboration with Diana Failla, CEO at the Urban Bird & Nature Alliance; Teal Gardner, Kent Bellows Mentoring Program Community Coordinator at Joslyn Art Museum; and Brent Lubbert, co-founder of Big Muddy Urban Farm. Ten of the twenty-four trees were planted by teens in the Kent Bellows Mentoring Program, under the guidance of Gardner as well as Kyle Johnson, Joslyn Museum Landscape Maintenance Technician.

The project was funded by generous grants from Lincoln Financial Foundation and ReTree Nebraska.

The Community Pie Social is a time for neighborly fellowship and dialogue about topical issues that impact people's daily lives, from politics and education to housing and healthcare. Free and open to the public, everyone is asked to bring a sweet or savory pie to share with others and engage in discussion. Inspired by the artist Michael Pribich and the organization Peace Through Pie, this roaming program was first developed for Theaster Gate's Carver Bank project at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE).

May 2015
Carver Bank’s first-ever pie social was a delicious convening of community, where Omahans discussed the role of the arts in North Omaha.

June 2015
At the second Carver Bank convening, participants discussed the intersections of art and gentrification. How can longtime residents ensure their inclusion in a changing neighborhood? What roles can artists play in neighborhood redevelopment?

February 2017
In conjunction with the exhibition The World is a Mirror of My Freedom, participants discussed police-involved shootings and economic mobility. How were you personally affected by the Keith Lamont Scott shooting and the Charlotte Uprising? Have these recent events shifted your perception of Charlotte or changed the way you move through the world?

September 2017
The New Orleans–based chef and writer Tunde Wey joined Rodrigo Valenzuela to facilitate a group conversation about anti-immigration sentiments in the U.S. For the past two years, Wey has traveled the United States, discussing the sociopolitical climate and using the food of his West African childhood to spur conversations.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE
June 11–October 10, 2015

The 2010 British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill is considered the largest environmental disaster in United States history to date. Three months after the explosion and sinking of the oil rig, which claimed the lives of eleven workers, the well was capped, but by then some 206 million gallons of oil had leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a 124-mile wide “kill zone” that eradicated countless marine animals. It is estimated that half the oil spilled remains in the Gulf, which is an important fish and shellfish source for millions of people in North America as well as in Europe.

Artist, biologist, and environmental activist Brandon Ballengée responds to the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the global crisis occurring in the world’s fisheries with Collapse—an installation of 26,162 preserved specimens, representing 370 species of fish and other aquatic organisms. Gallon-size jars are carefully arranged between sheets of glass in a seemingly precarious seven-foot pyramid suggesting the fragile interrelationships among Gulf species. From deep sea isopods to eyeless oil-stained shrimp with lesions, Ballengée’s collected specimens are reminiscent of silhouettes or apparitions. Empty jars represent species in decline or those already lost to extinction.

This exhibition was initiated by Amanda McDonald Crowley.

Images Courtesy the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Photographer: Colin Conces 

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
October 31, 2008–April 5, 2009

Co-organized with Maura Reilly, Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection was an exhibition of nearly fifty works from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. Inspired by the feminist masterpiece The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, this exhibition featured artists who have risen above the narrow roles imposed on women and whose work has challenged the status quo, particularly within the canons of art history. The exhibition title refers to the idea of the “master’s house” from two perspectives: the museum as the historical domain of male artists and professed masters of art history, and the house as the supposed proper province of women. Included in the installation were works by Nayland Blake, Kiki Smith, Tracey Emin, Tracey Moffatt, Miriam Schapiro, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Hannah Wilke.

“Burning Down the House shares a lot of artists, ideas, and assumptions with Global Feminisms: New Directions in Feminist Art, one of the largest, most ambitious, and well-publicized exhibitions devoted to feminist art in 2007. But perhaps because expectations for the current exhibition were not so high, and the curators didn’t feel compelled to provide overarching definitions of feminist art, Burning Down the House is more rebellious and complicated.” —Kimberly Lamm, Brooklyn Rail

Center for Book Arts, New York, NY
2011

Inspired by discussions and debates about food in contemporary culture, this exhibition brought together approximately forty works in which food is subject or medium, including limited-edition art books, lithographs, digital media, and performance.

Featured artists and collectives: Nava Atlas, Carissa Carman, Atom Cianfarani, Conflict Kitchen (Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, with Brett Yasko), The Counter Kitchen (Stefani Bardin and Brooke Singer), Critical Art Ensemble, Mindell Dubansky (with Miriam Schaer and Toby Dubansky), EIDIA (Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf), Joy Garnett, Marti Guixe, Heather Hart, Barbara Henry (with John DePol), Gretchen Hooker, Marisa Jahn (with Noa Treister), Susan Johanknecht, K Yoland, Robin Kahn, Isabelle Lumpkin, Emily Martin, Katharine Meynell, Scott McCarney, Aleksandra Mir, Elaine Tin Nyo, Hugh Pocock, Susan Roma, Leah Rosenberg, John Ross (with Sam Joffee), Mara Scrupe, Steve Shada, Maya Suess, Tattfoo Tan, Robert The, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

The exhibition catalogue/cookbook is available via Oak Knoll.

Lower East Side Print Shop, New York, NY
2013

Everything Is Not All There Is featured recent prints and drawings by Lower East Side Printshop residents Shanti Grumbine, Naomi Reis, and Julian Wellisz.

"Digital technologies have made it easier to share and receive information, yet our constant circulating of data can obscure messages as easily as we deliver them. Artists have and continue to probe this daily deluge of stuff to reveal more about contemporary communication and experiences than might be discerned through any one interface. The artists in the exhibition collectively explore newspapers, blogs, software, and structural designs. They trace flows of data, unveil unseen narratives, decode systems, and sift cultural memes. Their works speak to the vitality of analog and print alongside newer modes of communication." 

Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center, New York, NY, 2008
Co-curated by Maya Seuss

This three-night video art festival featured works by nearly thirty artists, including Julia Brown, Kambui Olujimi, Nanna Debois Buhl, Brendan Fernandes, Stephanie Hough, Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk, Jefferson Pinder, Shelley Silver, Federico Solmi, and Traci Talasco.

DAY 1

Veejay: Danielle Abrams

Stephanie Hough. Why Do You Like Video Art?, 2008

Elizabeth Axtman. Where’s the Party At?, 2006

Nanna Debois Buhl. Postcards-Tivoli, 2006

Alan Calpe. Perfidia, 2004

Jefferson Pinder. White Noise, 2008

Donna Szoke. Buried Treasure, 2004

Federico Solmi. The Evil Empire, 2007–2008

Brendan Fernandes. Foe, 2008

Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk. What don’t you understand about “I’m leaving… again” ?, 2005

Natalie Frigo. Men and Women, 2008

Traci Talasco. Sputter, 2008

DAY 2

Live performance: Coral Short

Stephanie Hough. Why Do You Like Video Art?, 2008

Esther Johnson. Yalda, 2007

Lauren Kelley. Get the Bones from 88 Jones: Because She Also Eats Meat, 2008

Heidi Kumao. Hole in the Floor, 2008

Mai Yamashita & Naoto Kabayashi. When I Wish Upon a Star, 2004

Alexander Reyna. Star HD 108, 2007

Patrick Bergeron. Loop Loop, 2007

Nina Barnett. Inside Out, 2007

Kambui Olujimi. Heartaches and Toothaches, 2006

DAY 3

Veejay: Tommy Mintz

Lilly McElroy. Hugs, 2005

Shelly Silver. in complete world, 2008

WINDOW INSTALLATIONS

Julia Brown. American Vernacular, 2007

Nanna DeBois Buhl. There is This House, 2008

Tirtza Even. Icaras, 2004
 

Image: Brendan Fernandes. Foe, 2008. Courtesy the artist.