Two of Nigeria’s most distinguished contemporary artists will be at the School of Oriental and African Studies this Thursday.
Ben Osaghae and Fidelis Odogwu, both alumni of Nigeria School of Art Polytechnic in Edo State will be discussing trends in contemporary Nigerian art.
Ben Osaghae has been described as a ‘social chronicler’. His paintings, drawings and mixed media creations contemplate the mundaneness of daily life.
Weld for Birmingham has a series where local folks can submit essays about the importance of 1963 to them. As an outsider who feels the weight of 1963, I submitted an essay which was published last week. Here's an excerpt of my essay and a link to the full essay. Enjoy!
"Although many of her residents do not believe this, Birmingham is a special place.
Deborah Sontag (The New York Times) reports on the work of Vlad Sokhin, a photographer who has been focusing on Haiti’s restaveks for a series called “Restavek: Child Slavery in Haiti.” Sontag explains: “Haiti is estimated to have 250,000 restaveks—children working as unpaid domestic servants after their parents, who cannot afford to raise them, give them away.” While the photo above seems to be benign enough, most of the other photos in the series were positively bone-chilling.
A conference at the Henry Moore Institute, 16 November 2013
Art and its histories have 'complex entanglements' with empire and imperialism, to borrow a phrase from theorist Nikos Papastergiadis. In collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute, New Voices investigates the intersections of art and decolonisation to ask what the specific implications of decolonisation are for art and art history. This symposium turns attention to the geo-political struggles, revolutions and cultural recalibrations that artists and art historians have championed, challenged and negotiated as imperialism and colonialism weakened their grip and took on new forms.
On Saturday, the Cuban art duo Los Carpinteros (“The Carpenters”) opened an exhibition of new work titled Irreversible. It should be called Irreverent, as Wendy Moonan writes for Architectural Recod.
The show, which occupies the entire Sean Kelly Gallery in Manhattan through June 22, includes an 11-foot-wide architectural watercolor, a room-size installation involving smashed tomatoes, a video depicting a conga dance in reverse (music also in reverse), and three sculptures that look like spacecraft.
Residents will get a rare chance to look at some of Charlotte Anna Lefroy’s work.
The ACE Gallery is displaying Celebrating Bermuda’s Colours: Bermuda Botanicals 1871 – 1877.
It is the first time they have been showcased since they were created in the 1870s.
In celebration of the 2013 Heritage Month theme, The Colours, Sights and Sounds of Bermuda, the ACE Gallery and the Bermuda National Trust have partnered to allow the general public to enjoy these works of art.
The IX Hairdressers and Afro-hairdos contest, "Knitting Hopes" took place last weekend, (May 11-12, 2013) in Cali, Colombia, sponsored by the Programa Nacional de Concertación del Ministerio de Cultura.
In its ninth iteration, scheduled during African Heritage Month, the contests seeks to celebrate African-style hairdos as a distinctive elements of black neighborhoods and to reaffirm African identity through the practice of hairdressing.
Christine Armario (Associated Press) writes about a poster exhibition held in Miami earlier this month (May 4) by State of SATS, an activist group attempting to foster civil society and stimulate discussion about Cuba's future. The group's leader, Antonio Rodiles, is in Miami to promote a campaign demanding that Cuba implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratify two United Nations covenants the government signed in 2008 protecting civil, political, social and economic rights.
I recently discovered a very interesting blog by Píter Ortega—Blog de Píter Ortega, a space dedicated to criticism of Cuban and international art—and I thoroughly enjoyed his review of performance artist Carlos Martiel. Ortega’s review—“El peso de una isla en el amor de un pueblo” —delves into Cuban performance art and the self-sacrificing (and sometimes, dangerous) nature of the work of Carlos Martiel Delgado Sainz (Havana, 1989).
“Preservar para no olvidar” (El Nuevo Día) focuses on the work of David Soto Padín, a civil engineering student at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, who has documented over 200 examples of Art Deco structures in Puerto Rico and founded the Puerto Rican Society of Historical Architecture in order to preserve memories. Soto Padín’s project is guided by his interest in showing that historical preservation and awareness of our architecture allows us to build “community.” …
