Artist and educator Angela Hennessy lives and works in Oakland, California, where she teaches at California College of the Arts. Through writing, studio work, and performance, her practice examines mythologies of blackness embedded in linguistic metaphors of color and cloth.
BHM
Object Lessons: Sonya Clark
“The original Confederate Flag of Truce was divided and divided and divided again. It got deconstructed, and here we have the effort of reconstructing it, of putting it back into the world, in as many different ways as we can.”
In Public and In Color: A Conversation with Leonardo Drew
Drew recently unveiled City in the Grass, a monumental commission for Madison Square Park in New York City, which remains on view through December 15, 2019. An eponymously titled solo show at his New York gallery, Galerie Lelong & Co., is on view through August 2.
Matthew Angelo Harrison: Future Perfect
Matthew Angelo Harrison met me at Stanford University’s Automotive Innovation Facility on a brisk day in February. Surrounded by oak trees on the edge of campus, the building is clad in green corrugated metal. Inside, it is a bright, clean space with six garage bays; it looks more like a lab than a body shop.
Tyree Guyton
DETROIT Museum of Contemporary Art As with much of Guyton’s work, he wants you to live simultaneously in two worlds: one of harsh social reality and the other of infinite possibility. The title of the show, “2+2=8,” alludes to a philosophy that embraces the latter condition.
Double Consciousness: A Conversation with Jefferson Pinder
In a career that has evolved from the performing arts to performance art, Jefferson Pinder consistently probes themes of racial identity through live performance, video, and sculpture. Key works such as Ben-Hur, Afro- Cosmonaut/Alien (White Noise), Overture (Star of Ethiopia), and Dark Matter meld historical legacy with current events, adopting references from W.E.B.
Ritual, Politics, and Transformation: Betye Saar
Betye Saar was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2018. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. For nearly 70 years, Betye Saar has created prints, collages, and assemblages that transform the cast-off and forgotten into powerful explorations of African American history and identity, the politics of race and gender,
Richard Hunt: Voyage Through Modernism
Richard Hunt was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2009. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Richard Hunt’s sculptural journey began in the 1950s with his startling achievements as a prodigy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Form That Achieves Sympathy: A Conversation with Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center in 2003. For a full list of Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, click here. Citalelli, 1999. Bronze, 43.5 x 14.5 x 14.5 in.
Elizabeth Catlett: The Spirit of Form
Elizabeth Catlett, Singing Head, 1979. Orange Onyx, 13 x 9 x 13 in. Since the mid-1940s, American-born Elizabeth Catlett has worked as a graphic artist, sculptor, and teacher. Together with her husband, painter and graphic artist Francisco Mora, she has also raised a family in Mexico.
