of the land...
acts of refusal & ratification
July 16 – September 24, 2022Location: South Side Community Art Center
…of the land: acts of refusal & ratification is a three-person exhibition exploring sculpture, self-imaging, homelands and history. Through post-colonial lenses, collective & individual recollection
and peculiar uses of material, the artists engage in an invigorating discourse surrounding traditional art-making. The use of storytelling holds significance for spatiality and locality to become common ground through this fielding of land, labor and industry. Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar expands the sculptural form welding metal, Trinidadian carnival culture and identity politics along the African diaspora. Lola Ayisha Ogbara merges West African and African American interior and exterior design aesthetics with bodily sculptural ceramic forms, alongside performative photography, that refuse a Western gaze. Reggie Treyshawn Williamson creates historical context for his own familial roots in the mining of charcoal material for large scale screen-printed tapestries in a careful consideration of laborious processes as praxis. Millar, Ogbara and Williamson engage in practices that consider topographic timelines and performance as an essential tool making for an interesting dialogue about homeplace.