MALCOLM PEACOCK, FIVE OF THEM WERE HERS AND SHE CARVED SHELTERS WITH WINDOWS INTO THE BACKS OF THEIR SKULLS, 2024
The central work of Peacock’s exhibition is a sculptural interpretation of a redwood tree trunk with synthetic hair braids forming its bark. It is so realistic in size that it appears as if it was freshly cut and placed in the gallery…
AWOL ERIZKU, SELECTED WORKS
Los Angeles-based artist Awol Erizku’s multi-disciplinary practice encompasses photography, sculpture, painting, installation, film, and sound to shape an artistic language that exists at the intersection of image making and language…
VANESSA CHARLOT, BLACK WOMAN'S SHADOW
In America, she lives in a perpetual state of trauma. To survive, she moves performatively through life, without processing her anguish. She symbolizes what has become the American norm—grieving, coping and healing in the shadows while carrying the burden that is one’s Blackness…
ARTHUR JAFA, APEX, 2013
Jafa has asked, at what scale should we consider the lives of Black Americans? For over thirty years—starting while he worked as a cinematographer—Jafa has compiled notebooks with clippings from a broad array of sources. His notebooks, facsimiles of which are on view nearby, are repositories of references and ideas that serve as reminders of the depth and beauty of Black life in America…
RAHIM FORTUNE, HARDTACK, LOOSE JOINTS, 2024
In the follow-up to his breakout monograph I can't stand to see you cry, Fortune borrows from the language of vernacular and archival photography to interrogate the historical relationship of his community to photography; rooted in the landscape…
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ, SEX SERIES, 1988-89
Working in New York City’s East Village during the late 1980s, Wojnarowicz created art that was both intensely political and deeply personal. The Sex Series emerged from an overwhelming sense of loss—of loved ones, of privacy…
AMBER N. FORD, MISTAKEN IDENTITY, 2018
The series, Mistaken Identity, shown in the group exhibition A Color Removed, tackles the question, “Who has the right to safety?” by presenting a collection of images of everyday objects that have been mistaken as weapons and led to the deaths of people of color at the hands of law enforcement officers…
PAZ ERRÁZURIZ, LA MANZANA DE ADÁN (ADAM’S APPLE)
The need to investigate environments wholly condemned in the oppressive context of the Chilean dictatorship (1973–90) led the photographer Paz Errázuriz to embark on a project on marginalized subjects that she would pursue over the course of several years…
SANDRA BREWSTER, ROOTS, 2021-2022
In her outdoor photographic installation, Roots, Toronto-based artist Sandra Brewster explores the long history of Black presence in the urban wilderness. Developed during her tenure as Koerner Artist in Residence at Evergreen Brick Works, the photographs document the area’s plant life, greeting visitors as they explore the valley…
GEORGE PLATT LYNES, SELECT NUDES
George Platt Lynes was a renowned American fashion and commercial photographer who enjoyed the prime of his career during the 1930s and 1940s. Although he was very sought after by major fashion publications for his beautiful images and stunning compositions, his real passion was the male nude, which he photographed extensively in the privacy of his studio…
MATTHEW LEIFHEIT, TO DIE ALIVE, 2022
To Die Alive conjures a hedonistic fever dream of Fire Island’s historic gay communities. The book contains 77 photographs by New York artist Matthew Leifheit taken by night over the past five years…
IMANI DENNISON AND LATETRA METTS-OWENS, NAKED TRUTH
In the series titled “Naked Truth,” a collaboration between fine artist Latetra Metts-Owens and Photographer, Imani Dennison, explores the truth behind people naked selves. In phase one of this project, subjects were interviewed and recorded on film, revealing things about themselves that were both uncomfortable and secret…
SONYA CLARK, BLACK HAIR FLAG, 2010
Traditional African American hairstyling techniques become the stars and stripes of the American flag against a backdrop of the Confederate Battle flag. The piece celebrates the roles African Americans played in the building of our nation…
MONA HATOUM, DEEP THROAT, 1996
Mona Hatoum has set the table for us with this artwork, Deep Throat, from 1996. The installation includes a table, roughly 3 feet square and just over 4 feet high, covered in a tablecloth with a single place setting and wooden chair in front of it…
ZOJA KALINOVSKIS, UNSEEN
Inspired by classical sculpture, Unseen portrays disabled bodies with reverence - as worthy of art instead of objects of pity. The series challenges the narrative that disability is synonymous with suffering and seeks to dismantle societal prejudices.
ALIREZA SHOJAIAN, WRESTLING SERIES, 2015
Alireza SHOJAIAN is an Iranian artist, born in Tehran in 1988. He began his career in Tehran and Beirut and has been based in Paris since 2019. His work aims to challenge societal prejudices against non-heteronormative masculine identities…
PAT WARD WILLIAMS, ACCUSED BLOWTORCH PADLOCK, 1986
One of Williams’ best known works is Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock (1986), which consists of an image of a black man tied to a tree (originally published in Life magazine in 1937 and not attributed to a specific photographer), surrounded by text expressing the artist's reaction to this image…
SHIKEITH, STILL WATERS RUN DEEP, 2021
Shikeith explores how Black queer re-making is a sacred space and practice in his two-part installation, still waters run deep / fall in your ways (2021). Using poetry, historical narratives, ambient recordings of children's rhymes, shades of blue, dance, and organic elements such as water, Shikeith maps Black men's negotiations of intimacy and routes toward freedom beyond architectural and societal constraints…
FINA MIRALLES, RELACIONS, RELACIÓ DEL COS AMB ELEMENTS NATURALS. EL COS COBERT DE PALLA, 1975
Her practice reconfigures the concept of the artistic, within the multiplicity of attitudes that blur what traditional historiography had encompassed under the heading of Conceptual art. The history of art has ascribed Miralles’ production to the Conceptual, Land art or even feminism, without attending to the breadth and complexity of her ideas, which challenge the limits of those labels…
ZORA J MURFF, THE DEVIL HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
In this collection of collages, Murff uses methodologies of enlightened witnessing and appropriation to demonstrate how a global conspiracy of anti-Black genocide has existed and continues to persist through systemic oppression…