Please let me be somewhere this is showing when it’s released

Posted on | August 28, 2010 | No Comments

I can’t wait.

From Shadow and Act:

a shot of Yahima Torres, star of Black Venus (Venus Noire), French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche’s film centered on the story of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, otherwise derogatorily known as the Hottentot Venus.

Right to Return In the NO today & tomorrow

Posted on | August 28, 2010 | No Comments

Right to Return

L9 CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS THE ANNUAL KATRINA CELEBRATION

New Orleans, LA
Saturday August 28, 2010
5pm-9pm

Sunday August 29, 2010
11am-6pm
539 Caffin Avenue
The Lower Ninth Ward, 70117

L9 Center for the Arts recognizes the determined residents in our community who continue to persevere in this struggle to return to New Orleans. For the past five years Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick have documented through photographs and video the people of the city as they make their transitions back to New Orleans. This work will be displayed in an exhibition entitled Right to Return and will grace the walls of the L9 Center for the Arts. Visitors to the gallery will not only see photographs of the return of the people of New Orleans but will also witness how photographing the community was part of Calhoun and McCormick’s own healing process, as the photographers worked to rebuild their own lives in the 9th ward while being inspired by their neighbors. On display will be photographs of New Orleans and its people from before and after Hurricane Katrina, including works printed from negatives washed by the flood that had been stored in a salvaged refrigerator. Right to Return is curated by Dr. Deborah Willis, chair of the department of photography and imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Images from this show have also been featured in August 2010 issue of Aperture Magazine. Supporters of the “Right to Return” Exhibit include the Ford Foundation and Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation, Open Society Institute, of the Soros Foundation.

An opening reception will be held August 28, 2010 from 5pm to 9pm at 539 Caffin Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward and the exhibition will remain open for viewing from August 28 through October 2, 2010. L9 hours are 11am-6pm Tuesday – Sunday. Contact Chandra McCormick at (504 948-0056) for more information.

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Lucy, 1997-2010

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 3 Comments

Lucy at Niagara Falls, American side, May 2010

My heart is absolutely broken.

When I moved to Rochester last summer, my dog Lucy, who had been my partner’s dog since she was found as a puppy, moved with me. Though I’d always heard of people who considered their pets their best friends, I never thought of myself as one, yet she saved my life. Her constant, sweet presence in what was otherwise a tremendously lonely year got me through each day, and though she was already 12, she was in such good health I assumed I’d get lucky and she’d live to be 15 or so, but that was not to be. 2 weeks ago while we were in New Orleans she was diagnosed with a number of serious health problems, and she passed away early this morning, the day we were scheduled to drive home. Though she actually loved Rochester, and flourished in the cold and snow, it seemed she wanted to return even less than I. I can’t imagine getting back tomorrow and realizing she won’t be there ever again. I love you, Lucy.

New artists, new artist’s sites

Posted on | August 6, 2010 | 2 Comments

• Documentary photographer Shelia Turner has a new page,  Shelia Turner Projects: http://www.wix.com/sheliaturner/shelia-turner
  

• Check out Canadian artist Megan Morgan’s Re-Photograph (2008) series and, really, all of her work:From Morgan’s website:

Dimensions variable. Series of 30 black and white c prints on rag paper. Images are 7″x7″ on 9″x12″ paper in a 10″x13″ frame. Total installation size is 110″ x 42″. Acquired by Kenneth Montague and part of the Wedge Collection and Wedge Curatorial Projects. For exhibition permission contact www.wedgegallery.com.

Pamela Edmonds from the 2008 Becoming MOCAD catalogue: “Like Petros, Megan Morgan’s work moves through and around traps of authenticity, extending contemporary definitions of “community” and “family”. In a recent photographic series entitled Re-photograph, Morgan explores her own interracial Bermudian-Canadian family history by re-contextualizing a series of old family portraits and re-presenting them in a series of grids. Issues of memory and loss are counter-balanced against notions of re-creation and assertion through these images, which ultimately questions perceptions of identity from a personal, cultural and familial perspective. These images seek not to create an imaginary wholeness out of disparate parts, but rather to offer paradox, fragmentation and ambiguity as primary states of being. Collectively, the works in this exhibition suggest an identity and a body in the process of “being” and “becoming”. Insofar as identity is performed and experienced as real, self-imaging through the photographic portrait has constituted a powerful strategy through which subjects maintain control over their lives and their image.

And though she does not have her own site check out young South African artist Mary Sibande, whose work is all over the web (her gallery page is here):

Mary Sibande, I Am A Lady, 2008 or 2009

“Inspired by the explorations of race, gender and sexuality in the work of American artists Kara Walker and Cindy Sherman, and London-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, Mary cast her own body in fibreglass and silicone to create Sophie. She then painted her a ‘flat black,’ so that she stands out like a dark and static shadow … Sophie’s eyes are always closed as if in a ‘constant ecstasy of fantasy’ and it’s in her mind that her dress becomes a thing of voluminous Victorian splendour. ‘If she opened her eyes, it would be back to work – cleaning this, dusting that. Her dress would become an ordinary maid’s uniform,’ said Mary.”

– Alex Dodd, Elle Decoration ZA

Call for Papers on the Intellectual History of Black Women

Posted on | July 28, 2010 | No Comments

The Black Women’s Intellectual and Cultural History Collective (BWICH) is seeking paper submissions for a broad-ranging conference on black women’s contributions to black thought, political mobilization, creative work and gender theory. We are interested in work on any time period that explores black women as intellectuals across a broad geography including Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe. BWICH aims to piece together a history of black women’s thought and culture that maps the distinctive concerns and historical forces that have shaped black women’s ideas and intellectual activities. To this end, we are interested in paper exploring subjects including, but not limited to, the genealogy of black feminism, the patterns of women’s leadership and ideas about religious culture and politics, the scientific work of black women, the economic ideas of black women, the politics of black women’s literature, and the history of black women’s racial, sexual or social thought. We encourage submissions from scholars of all ranks, and any relevant discipline.

Accepted papers will be featured at a conference on the Intellectual History of Black Women in New York City on April 28-30. The conference is sponsored by Columbia University’s Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, which will also cover the participants’ travel and lodging expenses. Submissions are due no later than October 15th, 2010, and should include a one-page abstract of the projected paper, as well as short C.V. Paper proposals and C.V.s should be submitted by email to: bwhichconference@gmail.com.

About BWHICH

BWICH is an interdisciplinary, collaborative effort dedicated to recovering the history of black women as active intellectual subjects. We aim to encourage scholarship on black women’s intellectual activities among a diverse and enduring community of senior and junior scholars, whose intellectual exchanges will cross generations and foster a scholarly tradition that outlives this particular project.

PROJECT DIRECTORS

Mia Bay, Rutgers University

Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University

Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan

Barbara D. Savage, University of Pennsylvania