Great to see Wangechi Mutu on a roll.  After the beautiful video she directed for Pegasus Warning, we now see her latest work, a collaboration with singer Santigold for the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

The animation is described as follows:

The 8-minute video, “The End of eating Everything,” marks the journey of a flying, planet-like creature navigating a bleak skyscape. This “sick planet” creature is lost in a polluted atmosphere, without grounding or roots, led by hunger towards its own destruction. The animation’s audio, also created by Mutu, fuses industrial and organic sounds.

“The End of eating Everything” was commissioned by the Nasher Museum as part of the new exhibition “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” the first survey in the United States for this internationally renowned, multidisciplinary artist, and her most comprehensive and innovative show yet. “The End of eating Everything” can be viewed in full, in person, at the Nasher Museum through July 21, 2013. This version is also shared at http://nasher.duke.edu/mutu/art.php.

First, check out a three-minute excerpt of the video:

And here’s a conversation between Wangechi and Santi talking about their collaboration:

Congrats, Wangechi!

H/T Mark Anthony Neal.

Additional links:

• Wangechi Mutu
• Wangechi Mutu at the Nasher Museum
• Santigold

Sculptor LeRone Wilson is the winner of the 2011 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series at Art Basel Miami.  He creates highly textured, encaustic–pigmented wax–sculptures.  He says his work “represents a medley of different textures that stimulate the senses, making the art not just a thing of beauty to be admired from a distance, but something we can feel connected to through the expression of touch.”

Also, he offers a great definition on minimalism:

Minimalism can be defined as the perfection that an artifact achieves when it is no longer possible to improve it by subtraction.  This is the quality I want to achieve with the texture of the encaustic.  Every component, every detail and every function has been reduced or condensed to the essential.  The simplicity of my work explores the possibility of working creatively without disrupting the purity of the material.

The above piece is called Glory #1 and he writes:

The piece reflects the biblical and scriptural themes I reference in my work.  It’s light-capturing translucence speaks to the spiritual light of God’s word, while the very ancient and archival encaustic medium used is a testament to God’s everlasting presence.  It’s texture immediately challenges the senses in a way that inspires a desire to touch, smell and even taste — just as the believer longs to experience such closeness to the creator.

Additional links:

• A recent Q&A with LeRone in The Morningsider
• LeRone Wilson official

(photo credit: Ed Marshall Photography NYC)

This is a new feature of the magazine. We’re really excited by the fact that there are so many talented visual artists out there.  Since we want to give folks a little shine, the way we do music, here’s the deal: We’ll tap a visual artist and they’ll share an image and a little bit about what they were trying to achieve with it, or what inspired them to create it.  In this way, we hope to expose you to some incredible talent and ideas.  First up, the homie Ed Marshall, one of the dopest ever to document the progressive black cultural scene here in NYC.

Of this photo of Daniel Chavis of Apollo Heights, Ed wrote:

So that image was probably taken around late 2006 or so. Members of Apollo Heights  and I were at Yuko Sueta’s studio in Long Island City. I was inspired by their live performances at the time, because along with their shoegaze-style sound, they projected art during the show. The artist who helped them with the projections was actually Yuko Sueta. Oddly enough, today (October 31)  is Yuko’s 3rd anniversary of her passing. This shoot was for promo imagery for the White Music for Black People project I believe. I was hoping to get a feel of the live show standing still and we accomplished that part. This image was actually NOT part of the promo package.  Yuko was starting up her laptop and projection gear and Daniel was standing in the video stream for a second. No one in the group was ready to shoot anything. I saw the image in motion to the second  Daniel stood and shot it without him knowing. Most people close to me know I can’t stand the posed shot, even though I can capture it. Trees, flowers, building and boats make great images at the right time of day. I tend to like to move with what I am capturing, because if I capture it when it’s giving… maybe, just maybe, you will receive it too.

More examples of Ed Marshall’s work here.

An interesting exhibit that’s up now at MoCADA and running through January 20, 2013 at various locations around NYC.  Here’s the statement by the curators Jessica Moore and Nelson Nance:

Be it in New York, Paris or Bamako, the world is experiencing a paradigm shift that began in Africa. Sparked by the 2011 toppling of Egypt’s thirty-year dictator, calls for revolution echo through mass media and populate social networking newsfeeds. MoCADA’s Curatorial Series, NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond, features a compilation of new media art, contemporary works and digital installations that investigate global interconnectivity and how anonymous parties define, construct, and support uprisings in Africa via social media. As text, images and videos are tagged, re-tweeted, and shared virally, are these so-called “revolutions” reflecting real world events or merely constructing an online reality? How does this digital dialogue influence global society’s relationship with Africa?

Newsfeed features the works of Delphine Fawundu-Buford, Malcolm A. Davis II, Barka, Aya Izumi-Rodriguez, Tamara Natalie Madden, Mohau Modisakeng, Jonathan Monaghan, Nyeema Morgan, Mourad Krinah, Pablo Mustafa, Jasmine Murrell, Damaso Reyes, Lisa C Soto and Aylin Tekiner.

Here are the curators, Moore and Nance, talking about the exhibition:

It’s really worth checking out the MoCADA site here for full exhibition info. The exhibit is located in several space and there seems to be a lot of public programming associated with it, including the My Africa Is doc series organized by NBI Festival alum Sian Morson of Kollective Mobile!

Additional link:

• NEWSFEED:Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond

Riffs on Real Time (2 of 10), 2002–2005, chromogenic color print, 30 × 24”. All images courtesy of the artist.

Came across this piece on NYC-based artist Leslie Hewitt via BOMB Magazine.  According to her bio:

Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific installations, Leslie Hewitt addresses fluid notions of time. Her work oscillates between the illusionary potential of photography and the physical weight of sculpture. In her photographed arrangements, she isolates personal ephemera and the residue of mass culture to consider the fragile nature of quotidian life.

The BOMB Magazine article explains:

Hewitt’s fascination with the way her grandmother arranged family photos in albums, juxtaposing images with “total disregard for chronology or linear time,” informs the sumptuous series Riffs on Real Time, 2002–2005. Hewitt stacks and arranges disparate types of imagery, such as snapshots, homework pages, and magazine covers, to create layered and complex photographic works. They show us the ways that contrasting fragments can eloquently articulate the larger story of one’s life and culture.

Hewitt’s work is now on display through December 30 at the Contemporary Arts Museum St. Louis.

Additional link:

• Leslie Hewitt official

Back in April, you guys may recall that we gave you a heads up on celebrated multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas and her first major solo exhibit that was just opening in LA. Happy to report that that show is coming to the Brooklyn Museum! Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe runs from September 28, 2012 through January 20, 2013.  The show highlights this Brooklyn-based artist’s work from the last two years–some ninety-three (93!) pieces–including new landscapes and interiors.

From the press release:

Thomas’s work grows from a long study of art history, drawing inspiration from the classical genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life, as well as from contemporary popular culture, the imagery of which she uses to explore issues of identity and race, as well as beauty and the self. Her work, which synthesizes a wide range of artistic and cultural references into a unique vision of the world, presents a complex perspective on what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty.

Thomas’s oeuvre investigates the body in relationship to the landscape and interior spaces through a pictorial style that reimagines past masterworks and transforms them in a modern-day idiom for the present. Her signature portraits of vibrant black women in photographs, paintings, and collages explore artifice, masking, and costuming. Her interiors draw on a range of historical periods, from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century to the present.

Working with models drawn from her circle of friends and relatives, she outfits them with carefully selected wigs, costumes, and makeup, then poses them in looks inspired by black popular culture from the 1970s to the present. Although her referents are often the anonymous models depicted in works by such artists as Manet and Matisse, Thomas frequently identifies her own subjects in her titles.

Some examples of Thomas’s work:

Additional links:

• Brooklyn Museum exhibit page
• Mickalene Thomas official

Previous issues

Again, it’s worth shouting out Hycide Magazine founder Akintola Hanif, editors Fayemi Shakur and Carrie Stetler, and contributing editor Michael Gonzales on the success of the first year of the magazine. MoCADA was packed on Friday as a diverse crowd came out to celebrate the magazine at its first year of highlighting photography at the intersection of subculture, street life and social justice. The magazine provides a substantive and visually stunning look at aspects of black life that don’t always get seen and, quite frankly, are often marginalized.

Again, congrats to all involved.  We’re looking forward to seeing more from this publication.

Additional links:

• Hycide Magazine
• Follow @hycidemag on Twitter

photo credit: Nema Etebar

Really thrilled to share this with you guys.  I came to know of HYCIDE Magazine last year around the Festival of the New Black Imagination’s launch, when I asked for art submissions to be shared during the performance portion of the event.  Some of the great images that I got were from HYCIDE’s founder Akintola Hanif and editor Fayemi Shakur.  I’ve been following the magazine ever since.

HYCIDE Magazine, based in Newark, NJ, features photo essays and stories on the intersection between subculture, street life and social justice. It also spotlights emerging and established artists that often work outside the mainstream.  According a recent press release:

Its fourth issue, which focuses on documentary portraiture, presents a range of international images, from the ghettos of San Juan to New Delhi. Acclaimed photographer Wayne Lawrence presents day trippers at Orchard Beach, “the Bronx Riviera,’’ while Joe Conzo shares the backstory of his definitive photos of hip-hop’s infancy. Henry Chalfant, a major force in graffiti art movement, remembers the earliest days of subway car tagging. There are also portraits of New Jersey gun owners in the wake of the “Dark Knight’’ shootings.

“The artists and photographers in this issue all share a similar mission: to reflect the beauty, creativity and diversity of people who are usually forgotten and cast aside,’’ says Akintola Hanif, HYCIDE’s editor-in-chief, himself an an acclaimed documentary portrait artist and film maker who, among other projects, has spent over a decade photographing east coast street gangs.  “That doesn’t mean they ignore poverty, violence and suffering in their quest to negate stereotypes or that they are afraid to explore the lives of people who are often viewed as a threat. But they approach their subjects with respect and the sincere desire to create understanding.”

Other editors include fayemi shakur, a former contributor to Vibe and The Source magazines, and Carrie Stetler, a veteran Newark Star-Ledger reporter and online editor. HYCIDE’s creative director is legendary street photographer, Jamel Shabazz, author of “Back in the Days,’’ whose work is also included in the anniversary issue. Contributing editor Michael A. Gonzales has written for the Village Voice, New York magazine and the London Telegraph, as well as Bold As Love Magazine.

Additional link:

• HYCIDE Magazine official

Zing Experience co-founders Paul Beaubrun and Cynthia Casasola. photo courtesy Richard Louissaint

Odds are if you’ve attended an underground hip-hop performance in New York during the last decade you’ve been in the company of Montreal born Haitian American photographer Richard Louissaint, Over the past ten years Louissaint has been visually documenting the careers of such artists as Tanya Morgan, BLKJKS, and Heavy.  Even though Louissaint’s work has appeared in Wax Poetics and exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, he still has flown underneath the radar of many of New York’s taste-makers, which is quite a feat for someone about 6’7″ tall.  However, with his latest venture, a documentary on the Haitian band Zing Experience, Louissaint appears poised to garner the widespread recognition that he’s long deserved.

I recently caught up with Louissaint to discuss his influences, inspirations, and the infusion of energy inciting this next phase of his career.

Can you say a little bit about what has inspired this latest transition from still photography to video? Are there any overlaps (thematic, content, etc) with what you’re looking to accomplish via film and your previous work in other as a writer?

Zing Experience co-founders Paul Beaubrun and Cynthia Casasola. photo courtesy Richard Louissaint

With writing you are always telling a story whether you are a journalistic or fiction author. Which is why the photography I have tended to do has some sort of storytelling element to it most of the time (music performances, photo essays, etc.). To be honest I wasn’t thinking about video before because of the cost and manpower required to do it. I’d like to thank Canon and their digital SLRs for enabling the transition to video. I still love the still image but video has allowed me to create a fully fleshed out story with music, talking and lots of physical movements.

Since I’m not as well-versed in film I can only say a few [names] off the top of my head like Malik Sayeed who shot a lot of Hype Williams famous videos in the 90s and of course Ernest Dickerson of Spike Lee fame. But I have become really inspired by all my peers and younger doing great music videos and films with limited resources. Just look at the FutureStates online film series that allows upcoming filmmakers to shoot speculative short films about the future.

In 2007, I met Zing Experience purely by accident at a fundraiser for Ciné Institute, a film making school in Haiti. I snapped one portrait of co-founder Paul Beaubrun playing his guitar and thought nothing of it, [then] said a quick hello to him and his wife, co-founder, Cynthia Casasola. I wouldn’t see them again until 2010 at an Emeline Michel show. They remembered me surprisingly and with the [January 2010 Haiti] Earthquake having displaced them, they were in New York indefinitely. I offered to take some pictures at their next show and the thought of doing a multimedia project grew organically from that.

How do you envision this project evolving? Do you foresee screening it in Haiti or getting any footage from any performances in Haiti?

Truthfully, I won’t be able to finish this project without going to Haiti with them. Haiti has been calling me for a long time and when my non-Haitian [peers] have managed to journey there I think, “What am I waiting for?”

 What else are you working on?  What else should we be checking for from Richard Louissaint?

I hope to start working on a video promo for an amazing Haitian jazz artist named Buyu Ambroise who has had a career spanning over 30 years and has been venturing out as a bandleader the past couple of years. I’m in the middle of editing a music video I shot for a talented singer songwriter from Chicago named Arin Maya.

@funkrockster

It’s worth repeating: It’s always good to see Nona Hendryx. Just ’cause.  I mean, she’s had swag before it was even called swag.

Tuesday, she performed a very short set at the opening of an art exhibit some of her paintings are part of called Love Or Fear at CATM Chelsea Gallery.  What was cool was that we finally got to see her Audio Tutu: It’s this plexiglass skirt with an iPod, iPad, speakers and sound processing controls built in.  And with it, she performed two songs– “Skindiver” and “Higher Purpose,” the haunting ballad that’s on the soundtrack to Showtime’s Sleeper Cell.

The show Love Or Fear is a collaboration between Nona, Francesca Galliani, and Gina Raphaela. According to the press release for the exhibit, their goal is to “deconstruct and reassemble “the role of women in present day society.”

Not sure how long the show is up, but check out the CATM Chelsea site for more information.

Nona in the Audio Tutu

The iPad control screen on the Audio Tutu

See more photos from the event on the Boldaslove.us Facebook page.

Additional link:

• Nona Hendryx official