CulturalDC presents
Roots of a Future
Curated by ISE-DA Art Advisory
DATES EXTENDED: NOV 10th - DEC 4th, 2022
Closed for the week of Thanksgiving. Reopening on November 30th.
1831 14th St NW, Washington, DC, 20009
Participating Artists:
Oluwatosin Adesanya-Olaleye
Chukwuemeka Chukwu
Kevin Claiborne
Shaunte Gates
Eilen Itzel Mena
Kyle Malanda
Nyugen E. Smith
Roots of a Future explores the theoretical and visual foundations of future-building. From the integration of technological advancements to the investigation of the dream as a site for speculating futures, the exhibition contrasts and analyses the different perspectives artists view Black futures across the diaspora.
With work that embeds surrealist and Afrofuturist elements, expresses traditional Black diasporic religions, and grapples with the treatment of Black women both online and IRL, this first physical iteration help examine critical questions about how to move towards a Black liberatory future. The exhibition contrasts and analyses the different perspectives artists view Black futures and present, from the integration of technological advancements to the investigation of the dream as a site for speculating futures. Roots of a Future reflects global diasporic voices, stressing the significance in a unified Pan-African movement towards Black future speculation and building.
Roots of a Future is part of TORRENTS: NEW LINKS TO BLACK FUTURES
Kevin Claiborne
Kevin Claiborne is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist whose work examines intersections of identity, social environment, & mental health within the Black American experience. Moving between collage, silkscreen, photography, painting, and sculpture, while frequently using language as material, Claiborne is interested in finding new ways to look at history and its connection to the present. Claiborne holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the historically Black college North Carolina Central University (2012), an M.S. in Higher Education from Syracuse University (2016), and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2021).
Eilen Itzel Mena
Eilen Itzel Mena is an Afro-Dominican American artist, writer and community organizer from the South Bronx. Her visual arts practice synthesizes Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism and African Diaspora spiritual frameworks through interdisciplinary work. In her social practice, she serves as a Co-Director and creative collaborator for Honey and Smoke, a global artist community and platform focused on creating space for artists to meditate on the important themes of our time through themed seasons. H&S explores these themes through creative inquiry, education, interactive experiences and digital content. Her multifaceted creative practice helps her connect African Diaspora, spirituality, culture, identity, and purpose. Her visual artwork explores the relationship between childhood and adulthood in order to bring forth healing and activation of purpose. Highlighting adult concepts with a childlike aesthetic, allows her to access joy while reimagining and challenging representations of trauma and emotional space. Her compositions reflect dreams, emotions and spiritual experiences. Exploring the dream realm in her compositions, in particular, allows for the re-envisioning of reality and expansion of what is possible in our social and environmental interactions.
kyle malanda
kyle malanda (b. 1994) is a Malaŵian photographer and filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of racial & ethnic identity, queerness, and indigenous spirituality in an increasingly globalised digital world. Her works seek to interpret Black history into her ideals for the present and imaginations for Black futures. Using her multi-cultural and transcontinental experiences as a queer Black woman, kyle's work is an autobiographical reflection of both society and the self/ves.
Olúwatósìn Adésànyà-Ọlálé̩yẹ
Olúwatósìn is a painter and draughtswoman with a penchant for elongation and modification of the human body which are aspects of her distinctive expression. She loves studying vulnerable subjects and the human experience. Her artistic inspiration derives from literature, music, individual narratives and dreams. Her most recent paintings and drawings are executed in graphite, oils, pastel and some of them interface with performances and soliloquies.
Chukwuemeka Chukwu
The state of my work now is continued bridging of critical interests held dear through technical ability acquired along the years. It serves as a reflection of who I am and what fills my life, the joy, the anger, what I like to learn and what skills I am developing. I’ve started approaching my creative practices as more of a language of communication experiences, how I can apply them and forming an ecosystem of varying forms of creative expression like car journalism, painting, engineering, architecture, gaming and so on. As my interests and experiences grow so do my avenues to explore. Each painting becomes super charged with moments that made it come to be as well its influences and deeper study or analysis. I capture the experience of gaming, something that’s been vital in my upbringing as a child living in a dangerous part of Lagos city and not much opportunity to go outside and play asides in school. Then there’s incorporation of my favorite playmate till date, my baby brother via his xbox gamertag. Depicting camos or skins that scream mastery and expertise of both the practice of gaming and the making of visual art. I set out to start discussions surrounding the work in a unique way, discussions of inclusion as a black man in an online gaming space and how hostile it can be towards me in an unpoliced or unchecked space, discussions of real life issues like gun violence and systematic racism, how a politician’s white family in the US can pose all armed to the teeth but imagery of me as a black man gaming with weapons that don’t exist can be seen as provocative to the same group. I use acquired technical ability and experiences like my study in architecture to take a deeper dive into moments of the work and tell of my understanding of elements in the work and what makes them tick. Making the work applicable in the design of racing helmets, gaming controllers and so on allows the technical side of the work more forms to exist as, could even be functional and essential to the day to day life of an individual. The process of incorporating all these elements turns out to be unstable and ongoing, there’s a continuous addition to the visual palette like collage for instance that allows me to pull elements directly from their sources to form the connection with other aspects of the work. Different timelines in the state of my practice have different critical interests and focus.
Nyugen E. Smith
Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ. Through performance, found object sculpture, mixed media drawing, painting, video, photo and writing, Nyugen deepens his knowledge of historical and present-day conditions of Black African descendants in the diaspora. Trauma, spiritual practices, language, violence, memory, architecture, landscape and climate change are primary concerns in his practice.
Nyugen holds a BA, Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History, Norway, Nordic Black Theater, Norway, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Shaunté Gates
Shaunté Gates is based in Washington, D.C., where he was born and raised. Gates’ works across mixed media collage and video subvert landscapes with architecture embedded with cultural symbologies and caste categorizations. The collage works have moved from canvas to wood in response to the needs of the layering of fabrics, canvas, paper, coins, and photographs. Gates’s use of found materials evokes the energy and cultural relevance of their site of origin and the popular culture referenced within these works. Gates refers to these landscapes as “Land of Myth,” and as such denotes, mythologies are layered within the materials. Gates produces dreamscape-like compositions rife with cinematic moments of beauty, chaos and glory depicting the labyrinth of social constructs we are all wading through. The works may be most succinctly described as psychogeography, an intersection of psychology and geography. It focuses on our psychological experiences of the city and reveals or illuminates forgotten, discarded, or marginalized aspects of the urban environment. Growing up in and around public housing projects during the “war on drugs,” Gates witnessed how mythologies produced social constructs, imagination and the limits therein inform our reality. Friends and family are often the photographed figures transfigured into a half-animal form or other motifs of mythology. They appear concurrently ancient and futuristic, exploring themes of duality, religion, introspection, and escapism. Gates is trained in oil painting, and prior to his recent works, he produced representational portraits. Gates’ past experience as a tattoo artist and television editor with BET Networks greatly informs his practice. He is a participating artist in Smithsonian Institution’s “Men of Change” four-year (2019-2022) traveling exhibition. The exhibition spans ten museums including California African American Museum, Cincinnati Underground Railroad Museum, and Washington State History Museum. Gates has work in esteemed private collections, and an acquisition by the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Collection. He has many public art commissions from schools throughout D.C., including Transcending, a painting commemorating the 140th anniversary of Howard University School of Law
Please contact kristi@culturaldc.org if you are interested in purchasing any of the artworks from Roots of a Future.
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