Brimming with Lush Texture, Mixed-Media Tapestries by April Bey Envision an Afrofuturist World

“Your Failure is Not a Victory for Me” (2022), watercolor, graphite, acrylic paint, digitally printed/woven textiles, hand sewing, 110 x 72 inches. All images courtesy of April Bey and GAVLAK Los Angeles | Palm Beach, shared with permission

How do we get from where we are to where we want to be with all of these constructs in the way? How do we move forward if we are constantly having to fight back? The past rolls in like a fog and clogs conversations about tomorrow with despair.

April Bey, a Black, queer, mixed-media artist, reminds us that sometimes, in order to get free, we must transcend. Positioning herself within the Afro-futurist tradition, she works with a fictional universe called Atlantica. Atlantica is inspired by the alien stories her father used to tell her as a child to explain racial oppression in the Bahamas and the U.S. Now, based in Los Angeles, Bey uses Atlantica to construct the aesthetics of the future—a reality where Black people are free from the confines of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.

As a Nassau, Bahamas native, Bey also incorporates the region’s tropical flora in her work. She positions the futurity of Black people in direct relationship to the environment, which can manifest as a physical landscape buzzing with harmonious texture, and draws on the legacy of Black art and literature that demonstrates how the natural world has always been part of Black liberation.

Her intricate stitching of Black people in grandeur also adds a layer of decadence to these stories that is reminiscent of African diasporic cuisine. Food seasoned over long periods of time or slow-cooked absorbs the depths of those flavors, and when tasted, envelops the palette. The process and attention to detail, alongside the historical and cultural knowledge, are the foundation.

 

“Don’t Think We’re Soft Because We’re Gracious” (2022), watercolor printed sherpa and sequins on canvas hand-sewn into faux fur, 45.5 x 57 inches

This work, like the environment and cuisine, is immersive. Sequins, eco-fur frames, wax fabric woven into large-scale blankets, and colorful patterns are enticing in their pleasure and vitality. The sense-heavy appeal helps transport the viewer beyond the visual and into the spirit of the body, connecting generations across space and time and planting the seeds of the future. Alexis Pauline Gumbs demonstrates this connection in an essay on combat breathing, which our ancestors used to claim their freedom in a world that would not acknowledge it, and Bey conjures this through-line in stirring pieces such as “Don’t Think We’re Soft Because We’re Gracious.”

Bey’s work adds to the long and transformative history of Black and queer people who have subverted power structures through futurity, love, and hybridity. And how fitting? For she knows that to be queer is to live in the future anyway.

You can catch the artist’s solo exhibition, Colonial Swag, at Tern Gallery until May 28 and follow her on Instagram for updates and to see close-ups of her works.

 

“Calathea Azul” (2022), woven textiles, sherpa textiles, resin, glitter on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

“I’m the One Selling the Records…They Comin to See ME” (2021), digitally woven tapestry, sherpa, canvas, metallic cord, glitter (currency), hand-sewing, epoxy resin on wood panel, 36 x 48 inches

“Fear No Man” (2022), digitally printed and woven blanket with hand-sewn “African” Chinese knockoff wax fabric, 80 x 60 inches

“Calathea Barrette” (2022), woven textiles, sherpa textiles, resin, glitter on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

“They Fine Pass Mami Wata” (2022), woven textiles, sherpa, metallic thread, resin, glitter on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

“You Toilet Paper Soft” (2022), woven textiles, sherpa, metallic thread, resin, glitter on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

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Curious Squirrels and Rambunctious Hares Form a Miniature Menagerie of Felted Wildlife

All images © Simon Brown, shared with permission

From a shy baby fox to toads donning crowns, the felted miniatures crafted by Simon Brown and Katie Corrigan are adorable, whimsical renditions of forest creatures. The Northumbria, U.K.-based creative duo transforms thick rovings of wool into wildlife that can be found perching on a snowy branch or creeping up on a mouse through the grass-like bristles of a wooden brush. Brown tells Colossal that he plans to incorporate more found objects into the newer sculptures, which are increasingly illustrative in style, and is also working on developing automata to add a liveliness to the realistic characters. See more of the pair’s process on Instagram.

 

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Hundreds of Porcelain Layers Recreate 20th Century Technologies in Intricate Sculptures by Anne Butler

“Analogue” (2016). Photo by Vizz Creative. All images © Anne Butler, shared with permission

Artist Anne Butler cites the porcelain pieces that comprise her ongoing Objects of Time series as being “witness to their own history.” From her studio in Carryduff, Butler recreates 20th Century technologies like rotary telephones and typewriters through an array of techniques from casting and carving to assembly—watch her process in the video below. Brimming with texture and striking in dimension, the analog works explore cultural memory, associations to history and personal use, and the impressions these items have left on the world long after they’ve fallen from widespread use.

Butler shares with Colossal that each of the objects was an important part of her childhood and that the building process reflects its mechanics. The intricately slotted “Analogue,” which replicates her family’s phone, relied on low-tech templates to create the thin Parian porcelain sheets that, once dried, the artist interlocked into their final shape. Similarly, “Remnant” and “Shift” both layer hundreds of individual slabs into keys and sewing tools that are slightly skewed and indicative of their hand-built construction. These irregularities reference the imperfection of the humanmade in comparison to the precision that’s possible with automation.

As she expands Objects of Time, Butler plans to reproduce kitchen scales and her first SLR camera, so keep an eye on Instagram for those works. If you’re in London, you can see “Shift” at Two Temple Place between May 11 and 14 as part of Eye of the Collector. You also might enjoy Yoonmi Nam’s worn sketchbooks. (via Lustik)

 

Detail of “Analogue” (2016). Photo by Vizz Creative

Left: “Shift” (2018). Right: “Stack” (2020). Photo by Bob Given

Detail of “Shift” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

Detail of “Shift” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

“Remnant” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

Detail of “Remnant” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

Detail of “Remnant” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

Detail of “Shift” (2018). Photo by Vizz Creative

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Sculptural Portraits Revive Used Paintbrushes with Social Commentary and Historical Details

“Caroline,” oil on carved wood, plastic, metal, plaster, and epoxy. All images © Rebecca Szeto, shared with permission

San Francisco-based artist Rebecca Szeto (previously) applies a heavy dose of social commentary to her ongoing Paintbrush Portraits. Through whittled busts and oil-based figurative renderings, Szeto alludes to a wide array of historical moments, significant figures, and issues that continue to impact the world today.

She transforms the used tools with hard bristles and stained ferrules—she’s committed to an ecologically-conscious practice that repurposes materials already available—into poetic works that are subversive and metaphorical. The optic handle of “Tapada Americana,” for example, references the Peruvian tradition of women wearing a skirt and mantel that fully covered their bodies, “leaving visible a single cycloptic eye,” the artist writes. “Differing from its cousins the burka and the hijab, it signified a level of discreet domestic freedom and sexual intrigue for women.”

Questions about modesty and dignity continue to influence Szeto’s practice, and she shares with Colossal:

I find myself circling this notion of grace, as the innate virtues and values we possess as humans. For me, grace signals our ability to keep an emotional distance that allows us the fortitude and creative agency to transform and re-imagine the world around us. My interest lies in how we transcend challenging times, linguistic labels and offer up teaching moments for serious play and energetic renewal.

For more of Szeto’s works that span painting, installation, and other mediums, visit her site and Instagram.

 

“Model Minority”

“Princess/Priceless (of Broglie. Ode to Ingres),” oil on carved paintbrush, 8 x 3 x .5 inches

“Princess/Priceless (of Broglie. Ode to Ingres),” oil on carved paintbrush, 8 x 3 x .5 inches

“Tapada Americana”

“Reflections on Beauty”

“Threading the Needle”

“Green (Immigrant)”

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Colorized Footage Travels San Francisco’s Market Street Four Days Before the Devastating 1906 Earthquake and Fire

The Miles Brothers were cinematic trailblazers, who, in 1906, filmed the historic “A Trip Down Market Street.” Traveling from 8th Street to the Embarcadero, the 13-minute journey documents San Francisco’s environment from the perspective of a cable car, showing the busy strip full of horse-drawn carriages and vehicles alongside the buildings and fashions of the time.

What makes the black-and-white footage particularly notable is that it captures the city mere days before that same landscape underwent a massive transformation. A 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked the California coast in the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, in a shock that was so intense it ignited fires around the city. The original devastation and subsequent blazes killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed 80 percent of San Franciso’s architecture and infrastructure.

A new colorized version of “A Trip Down Market Street” returns to the pre-disaster scene in an incredibly clear and bright view of the city. Restored by NASS, the reimagined footage increases the speed from 15 to 60 frames per second, upgrades the resolution, and adds a soundscape to mimic the noises that residents might have heard around the turn of the century. While adding a creative flourish to historical documentation, NASS’s update offers a glimpse of the city and its people before it was irrevocably altered.

Prelinger Archives, San Francisco has the original 35mm footage, which you can watch on Internet Archive, and visit on YouTube for more of NASS’s restorations. You also might enjoy this footage from 1902 of a “flying train” in Wuppertal, Germany. (via My Modern Met)

 

 

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Artist Simone Leigh Embodies Self-Determination in the Historic ‘Sovereignty’ at the Venice Biennale

Background: “Façade” (2022), thatch, steel, and wood, dimensions variable. Foreground: “Satellite” (2022), bronze, 24 feet × 10 feet × 7 feet 7 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, by Timothy Schenck, © Simone Leigh

“To be sovereign is to not be subject to another’s authority, another’s desires, or another’s gaze but rather to be the author of one’s own history.” This conviction founds Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, the artist’s new body of work created for the U.S. Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale. Leigh is the first Black woman to be awarded the prestigious commission.

Comprised of towering bronze works and ceramics, the exhibition continues Leigh’s questions about self-determination, historical erasure, and Black femme subjectivity. She explores both interiority and what it means for Black women, who she’s repeatedly described as her primary audience, to move through the world.

While largely sculptural, Sovereignty opens with Leigh’s reinterpretation of the pavilion’s Palladian-style facade. A thatched roof and wooden columns cloak the stately architecture in reference to the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, which celebrated French dominance and extracted and exoticized objects, images, and materials of African cultures. The Jamaican woman hunched over a mirrored pool in “Last Garment,” a depiction Leigh originally discovered on a vintage postcard, similarly rebukes colonialism and the negative stereotypes it perpetuates.

 

“Last Garment” (2022), bronze, 54 × 58 × 27 inches

Inside are additional figurative works, including the soaring, abstract bronze piece titled “Sentinel,” which has a wide, sloping head and echoes the squat “Satellite” at the exhibition’s entrance. Evoking the artistic traditions within Africa and of the diaspora, many of the pieces address questions and themes that recur in Leigh’s practice, although they extend her oeuvre, as well. As with her earlier works, cowrie shells make an appearance, emerging from a large, ceramic jug and resting atop a raffia dome in “Cupboard.” The standing bronze “Sharifa,” on the other hand, depicts Leigh’s friend, the writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and is the artist’s first portrait.

“In order to tell the truth, you need to invent what might be missing from the archive, to collapse time, to concern yourself with issues of scale, to formally move things around in a way that reveals something more true than fact,” she says in a statement about Sovereignty, adding in her opening remarks that, “Black women and Black people in general across the diaspora … We often are getting information from someone who had a different intention than we have.”

In addition to Sovereignty, Leigh’s monumental bust “Brick House,” which was stationed at the High Line through May of 2021, is included in the Biennale’s international exhibition The Milk of Dreams, on view through November 27. “Brick House” also won a Golden Lion, the exhibition’s highest award.

 

“Cupboard” (2022), raffia, steel, and glazed stoneware, 135 1/2 × 124 × 124 inches

“Sphinx” (2022), glazed stoneware, 29 3/4 × 56 3/4 × 35 inches

Detail of “Sharifa” (2022), bronze, 111 1/2 × 40 3/4 × 40 1/2 inches

“Sentinel” (2022), bronze, 194 × 39 × 23 1/4 inches

“Martinique” (2022), glazed stoneware, 60 3/4 × 41 1/4 × 39 3/4 inches

“Jug” (2022), glazed stoneware, 62 1/2 × 40 3/4 × 45 3/4 inches

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Surreal Narratives Unfold in Natural Settings in Michelle Kingdom’s Enigmatic Embroideries

“Skies have a way of falling” (2022). All images © Michelle Kingdom, shared with permission

Immersed in dreamlike surroundings, figures interact with nature and participate in enigmatic rituals in embroideries by Michelle Kingdom (previously). The Los Angeles-based artist continues to explore what she describes as “psychological landscapes,” portraying a diverse range of figures in ambiguous activities and settings that are intricately composed from thread. Drawing on the rich traditions of needlework, she takes a more freeform approach to the medium in which stitching becomes a tool for sketching, honoring its history while subtly subverting convention.

Often gathered together, Kingdom’s subjects appear to be performing vital tasks or observing fascinating or momentous occurrences, yet their intentions are mysterious. Her compositions combine elements of nature, geometry, and allegory. In her statement she writes, “Memories, histories, and mythologies collide amid an undercurrent of political turbulence. Entwined, these influences explore power, relationships and self-perception.”

The artist is currently working toward a solo exhibition with bG Gallery in Santa Monica in early 2023. You can find more work and follow updates on her website and Instagram.

 

“After all, it was only make believe” (2021)

“Securely Fastened” (2021)

“True Blue” (2021)

“We grow accustomed to the dark” (2021)

“As if they stood under glass” (2021)

“Exchanging Heaven for Earth” (2021)

“No Respite” (2020)

“The Orbit of Paper Moons” (2021)

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