Search results for ""author cheryl finley""

How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of Black resistance, identity, and remembranceOne of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was—shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance.Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by Black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film—and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors.Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary Black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.

Read more less

‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory is the companion publication to the FotoFocus biennial exhibition that is scheduled for Fall 2022 and will run at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center until Spring 2023. This project considers the historic and contemporary role that photography and film have played in remembering legacies of slavery and its aftermath while examining the social lives of Black Americans within various places including the land, at home, in photographic albums, at historic sites, and in public memory. This exhibition acknowledges artists’ constant involvement with efforts to explore the possibilities of freedom and their relationship to it. Their quest to be ‘as free as they want to be’ is envisioned in the subject matter they explore as well as in their persistent drive to innovate aesthetic practices in photographic media. The publication presents some 20 artists working in photography, video, silkscreen, projection, and mixed media installation. Free as they want to be is inspired by the words of James Baldwin and the timely theme of FotoFocus, World Record, as well as events of late that have shaped the world as we know it. The artists selected for this publication are on the frontlines, creating, documenting, and writing. The works they have conceived reflect defining moments in the struggle for racial justice and equality. Free as they want to be presents an occasion to reflect upon the past, to mark significant defining moments – both triumphs and tragedies – that characterize a people and their experiences in the present – and to propose future possibilities. The artists offer images that advance a different sense of empowerment. Their images thus play an integral part in casting resilient narratives as they commemorate endurance, longevity, and accomplishment. The timing of a publication like this could not be more urgent given the human toll of the pandemic, widening economic disparities, the threat of war, voting rights, global migration crises, and quotidian violence. Proposed Artists: Terry Adkins; Radcliffe Bailey; J.P. Ball Studio; Sadie Barnett; Dawoud Bey; Sheila Pree Bright; Bisa Butler; Omar Victor Diop; Nona Faustine; Adama Delphine Fawundu; Daesha Devon Harris; Isaac Julien; Cathy Opie; Hank Willis Thomas; Lava Thomas; Carrie Mae Weems; Wendel White; William Earle Williams; anonymous tintype photographer – photo album

Read more less

Whitfield Lovell: Passages accompanies a major traveling exhibition of the artist s masterful conte crayon drawings, assemblages, and multi-sensory installations that focus on aspects of Black history, raising questions about identity, memory, and America s collective heritage. Whiteld Lovell (b. 1959, Bronx), a 2007 MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient and conceptual artist, creates exquisite drawings inspired by his own collection of vintage photographs of unidentied African Americans taken between the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement. He pairs his meticulously rendered drawings done on paper or on salvaged wooden boards with found objects, creating enigmatic assemblages and stand-alone tableaux that are rich with symbolism and ambiguity and evoking personal memories, ancestral connections, and the collective American past. This richly illustrated volume features essays by leading scholars that contextualize Lovell s work through the exploration of compelling elements such as sound and card playing, contemplating memory as method.

Read more less

"An inspiring makeshift ingenuity....These mirror images with their uncanny resemblances traverse space and time, spotlighting the black lives that have been silenced by the canon of western art, while also inviting us to interrogate the present." -Times (UK) Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peter Brathwaite has thoughtfully researched and reimagined more than one hundred artworks featuring portraits of Black sitters-all posted to social media with the caption "Rediscovering #blackportraiture through #gettymuseumchallenge." Rediscovering Black Portraiture collects more than fifty of Brathwaite's most intriguing re-creations. Introduced by Brathwaite and framed by contributions from experts in art history and visual culture, this fascinating book offers a nuanced look at the complexities and challenges of building identity within the African diaspora and how such forces have informed Black portraits over time. Artworks featured include The Adoration of the Magi by Georges Trubert, Portrait of an Unknown Man by Jan Mostaert, Rice n Peas by Sonia Boyce, and many more. This volume also invites readers behind the scenes, offering a glimpse of the elegant artifice of Brathwaite's props, setup, and process. An urgent and compelling exploration of embodiment, representation, and agency, Rediscovering Black Portraiture serves to remind us that Black subjects have been portrayed in art for nearly a millennium and that their stories demand to be told. An exhibition of Brathwaite's re-creations is on view at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in Bristol, UK from April 14 to September September 3, 2023.

Read more less

A vivid and moving celebration of the ways that Black Americans have shaped and been shaped by photography, from its inception to the present day. A Picture Gallery of the Soul presents the work of more than one hundred Black American artists whose practice incorporates the photographic medium. Organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, this group exhibition samples a range of photographic expressions produced over three centuries, from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art. From the daguerreotypes made by Jules Lion in New Orleans in 1840 to the Instagram post of the Baltimore Uprising made by Devin Allen in 2015, photography has chronicled Black American life, and Black Americans have defined the possibilities of photography. Frederick Douglass recognized the quick, easy, and inexpensive reproducibility of photography and developed a theoretical framework for understanding its impact on public discourse, which he delivered as a series of four lectures during the Civil War. It has been widely acknowledged that Douglass, the subject of 160 photographic portraits and the most photographed American of the nineteenth century, anticipated that the history of American photography and the history of Black American culture and politics would be deeply intertwined. A Picture Gallery of the Soul honors the diverse visions of Blackness made manifest through the lens of photography. Published in association with the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. Exhibition dates: Katherine E. Nash Gallery: September 13–December 10, 2022.

Read more less