Faculty: Artist Talk, Curated by Oshun Layne
in exhibit
Shaunte Gates
A.M. SATOU WEAVER: ARTIST, WRITER, CURATOR DIES
in article
A.M. Weaver, best known for her curatorial and art criticism work, died on January 9th 2018, due to natural causes. She is survived by her brother Joseph Warr, cousin Eunice McQueen, and nephew Joseph Warr, Jr., as well as her extended family Yvonne Hardy-Phillips, Gary Smalls, Jackie Asbury, Beverly Bryant, Gregory Russell, Gregory Gray, E J Montgomery, Carol Rhodes Dyson, Lea and Shaunte Gates, and Baby Biko.
Read MoreCo-Founders of Delusions of Grandeur at Prizm Art Fair
in exhibit
Contemporary Black Artist Movements: Artists Jamea Richmond-Edwards and Amber Robles-Gordon, Co-Founders of Delusions of Grandeur artist collective will speak of the relevancy, evolution and power of artist collectives and artistic movements. Richmond-Edwards and Robles-Gordon, parlayed a series of conversations about personal experiences in the art world, the cultural influence and legacy of Howard University, and the examination of artist group and movements such as Spiral, Black Artists of DC, Africobfra and the Black Arts Movement to build a contemporary art cannon.
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The Group Exhibition Lest We Forget at Galerie Myrtis reviewed by Angela N. Carroll
in review
often wonder how these times will be remembered. What will future generations learn from this moment? Which stories will historians archive? What experiences will be forgotten? Watching the insanity of this election cycle has confirmed for me the importance of knowing histories; not just your own, but the distant and contemporary, local and international happenings that have shaped our present.
The rhetoric employed by the extreme wings of the GOP has empowered and emboldened embarrassingly inaccurate and flatly supremacist depictions of American history. Slogans like “Make America Great Again” assume that the growth of America’s empire occurred without the toil of immigrants, people transported by force, or those who relocated in the hopes of accessing the freedoms of democracy.
A recent poll released by Reuters revealed that 38% percent of American voters continue to support the GOP’s candidate despite his blatant disregard for anyone other than white men and general dismissal of fact-based platforms. I dare not try to understand the irrational reasoning of deplorables, but urge critical thinking voters to remember the whole and diverse contributions that sustain America. Lest we forget all those that came before us, live among us– the laboring bodies that support the world.
The exhibition titled Lest We Forget curated by Deirdre Darden and Jarvis DuBois at Galerie Myrtis interrogates a legacy of historical cultural bias; the conceptions that determine a story’s archivism or omission from history. Artists Wesley Clark, Larry Cook, Shaunte Gates, Jamea Richmonds-Edwards, Amber Robles-Gordon, and Stan Squirewell, collectively known as Delusions of Grandeur, and Delita Martin all contribute their own reflections about forgotten experiences in order to build a richer, more inclusive, and more accurate vision of history.
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The Watcher, 2015, Gelatin printing, acrylic, collage, hand-stitching and conte, 50” x 38" by Delita Martin
Lest We Forget
in exhibit
Galerie Myrtis
About the Exhibition
The exhibition presented at Galerie Myrtis, Lest We Forget examines pivotal moments and figures in U.S. history, as well as the everyday occurrences and unknown individuals that have impacted, to various degrees, the African American experience here, and by extension, throughout the world.
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By Emory Douglass
IT TAKES A NATION
in exhibit
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION
In the Alper Initiative space, Washington artists respond to the graphics of Black Panther artist Emory Douglas with sculpture, paintings, photography and multi-media installations. The exhibition features Emory Douglas and Howard University colleagues and members of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (“AFRICOBRA”): Jeff Donaldson, Akili Ron Anderson, James Phillips, Jay Jarrell and Wadsworth Jarrell. Collectively, they create a powerful lens to the socio-political landscape of the late 1960s and 70s that helps to visualize the 1967 Black Panther Party 10-point platform addressing issues of freedom, employment, economic exploitation, affordable housing, education, war, police brutality, prison, due process, and access. The exhibition also includes artists examining these same issues 50 years later within a contemporary context, including: Holly Bass, Wesley Clark, Jay Coleman, Larry Cook, Tim Davis, Jamea Richmond Edwards, Shaunte Gates, Jennifer Gray, Amber Robles Gordon, Njena Jarvis, Simmie Knox, Graham Patrick, Beverly Price, Sheldon Scott, Stan Squirewell and Hank Willis Thomas.
Read More"How We Lost DC" at Honfleur Gallery Wednesday, Sept. 16
in exhibit
By Emily Walz, Washington City Paper
Few cities are undergoing a period of gentrification as lengthy as D.C.’s, and perhaps none are gentrifying as quickly. The individual stories of displacement, as well as the larger narrative arc that shows how class and racial lines overlap to push out poorer minority communities, have particular poignancy in D.C., one of the first cities in the U.S. with a black majority. Against this backdrop, the local African-American artist collective Delusions of Grandeur created How We Lost DC, an exhibition the group calls “a visual discourse on gentrification.” The work of Wesley Clark, Larry Cook, Shaunté Gates, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Amber Robles-Gorden, and Stan Squirewell encompasses photography, textile, paintings, mixed media, and sculpture in a show that moves between portraiture and would-be artifacts to tapestry and art made from maps of the District itself.
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Examiner.com: DC artists bring local flavor to Prizm Art Fair in Miami
in article
Examiner.com
A talented group of creatives from the DC area are showing their work in the Prizm Art Fair at Art Basel Miami. Prizm is a curated exhibition founded in 2013 by Mikhaile Solomon, a Miami-based designer, arts advocate and producer. According to Solomon, the mission of Prizm is to promote artists of color and “expand the spectrum of international artists from the African Diaspora and emerging markets at one of the most prestigious art festivals in the world.”
The Prizm Art Fair, located at the Miami Center For Architecture And Design (100 NE 1st Avenue), is one of many events held during Art Basel week - an international showcase for contemporary art featuring over 300 distinguished galleries and attracting an estimated 80,000 visitors.
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Subtle Attention-Seekers Without Strings
in review
Delusions of Grandeur seems about right for the name of an artists’ collective showing in a hole in the wall in Brentwood.
Located on the second floor of the Gateway Arts Center, the 39th Street Gallery is a 450-square-foot box that has been known to put on pretty cool little shows, including a recent micro-retrospective of the great D.C. painter Manon Cleary, who died last year. But the National Gallery of Art it is not.
Read More‘Delusions of Grandeur’
in review
The Washington Post
One link between the three young, local artists featured in “Delusions of Grandeur: Ascension” is African American identity. Another is fabric. Amber Robles-Gordon (whose work was reviewed by The Post in July) makes abstract hanging assemblages that feature ribbons and scraps. Jamea Richmond-Edwards does idealized portraits that incorporate textiles, sequins and bows. Shaunte Gates includes bits of cloth and other found materials in allegorical paintings that draw on the tradition of biblically themed medieval and Renaissance canvases, but also sometimes suggest the heroic poses of sci-fi and comic-book characters.
The artists chose the exhibition’s title, and in a statement explain that it refers to “the ‘delusions of grandeur’ that each artist possesses in order to continue progressing . . . in their artwork.” The “ascension” part comes from one of Gates’s paintings, which depict muscular men who are both divine and debased, as likely to sprout wings as to wear to a crown of barbed wire. His figures are rendered realistically, as are some of his settings, notably the urban alley shown in “January 6, 1956: Time Traveler.” But other backdrops are wilder, sometimes verging on abstract expressionism. “May 28, 2004: Lost One” shows a man plunging into a loosely rendered whirlpool, as if diving into the picture plane itself.
Richmond-Edwards’s work is more formal. Faces, penciled in shades of gray, combine African American features with the somber bearing of Greco-Roman sculpture. Many of the countenances are identical, giving the work a paper-doll quality. These visages are surrounded by bright colors and patterns, and adorned with a rose-petal print in various colors. If the result seems a little too fashion-schooled, clothing is a part of cultural identity. Playing dress-up is one way that people define, or redefine, themselves.
Jenkins is a freelance writer.
Artists:
Delusions of Grandeur: Ascension on view through Sept. 16 at Parish Gallery-Georgetown,
1054 31st St. NW, 202-944-2310,
Washington, DC
www.parishgallery.com.www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/photos-reach-deep-into-go-gos-pocket/2011/08/31/gIQAAaq6uJ_story_1.html
Delusions of Grandeur: Ascension
in exhibit
Press Release
Shaunté Gates, In my dreams II, 2011
Amber Robles-Gordon, Peacock. 2011
Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Revealation, 2011
WASHINGTON, DC- Parish Gallery, in conjunction with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is pleased to present an exhibition by three artists – Shaunté Gates, Jamea Richmond-Edwards and Amber Robles-Gordon, “Delusions of Grandeur: Ascension”. This show will open with a reception from 6:00-8:00 pm on Friday, August 19th, and will run through September 16th, 2011.
This exhibition is the result of an artistic dialog about the “delusions of grandeur” they each possess in order to continue progressing in their careers and most importantly in their artwork. Ascension, the act of rising to an important position or a higher level, is the theme adapted for this current body of work. Each artist presents their individual interpretation of the act of ascending.
Artists Shaunté Gates work combines multiple processes and genres, by taking appropriations and gestures from pop culture and print media which are combined to create elusive narratives. Gate’s works seduce us into an imaginary world of juxtaposition and fantasy, a place when the contradictions of culture and the human psyche are collided. His mixed media paintings capture the beauty in subjects that may appear bleak to the average eye at first glance. Gates ideas are derived from the pain, joy, and the beautiful way everything universally is connected.
Jamea Richmond-Edwards work explores the contradictions of female and cultural identity and with reference to Greek Mythology, African folklore and international fashion. Richmond- Edwards examine how mythologies from ancient times translate into today’s culture and time allegorically. Her figures are empowered by their survivalist adaptation to circumstance. Their sharp features are inspired by both high fashion models and the everyday women in her community.
Amber Robles-Gordon mixed media artworks draw upon her journey through motherhood, genealogy, healing, and being alive today. They represent her technical and scholarly growth as an artist, and are supported by her professional development in the Washington, DC area. Her two- and three-dimensional pieces it within an expansive notion of painting and sculptural form. She uses stretched canvas to support an accumulation of media in low- or sharp-relief. These assemblages require a close look to interpret their individual parts. Collectively, these parts form a visual energy comprised of the previous “lives” of the objects, their former owners, and the artist’s hand.
Parish Gallery primarily, but not exclusively, represents contemporary visual artists of significance from Africa and the African Diaspora. In selecting art and artists, Parish Gallery exercises high ethical, curatorial and market selection standards, catering to the spirit of social preservation and regeneration in collecting the art. Parish Gallery is open Tuesday thru Saturday from noon to 6:00 PM or by appointment.
Artists:
Exhibition Dates: August 19- September12, 2011
Opening Reception: August 19, 2011 6-8pm
Parish Gallery
1054 31 Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20007