THE CREATION OF THE NAG PROTEST PIECE

by Heather-Dawn Scott

Artists Alliance Barbados presents ‘The Resilience of Afrikan Values, One People’ exhibition.

Hosted by the Embassy of Argentina.

Curated by Walter Bailey

OPENING RECEPTION:

Friday March 3rd, 5.30pm - 8.30pm

Exhibition closes Friday April 14th, 2023

VIEWING BY APPOINTMENT

Call: 537-1800/4

Monday- Friday. 10am-2pm

Sheena Rose’s solo exhibition “Earth Black Lipstick” will be on view from February 25 to April 1, 2023, at the Johansson Projects Gallery

(located at 2300 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, California), USA.

A reception will take place on March 3, from 5:00 to 8:00pm.

Johansson Projects presents Earth Black Lipstick, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Barbados-based artist Sheena Rose. The exhibition runs from February 25 – April 1, 2023 with an artist reception on Friday, March 3, 5- 8pm. Natasha Becker, Curator of African Art from the deYoung Museum, San Francisco writes:

Combining representation, abstraction, and bracing color, Sheena Rose captures the lost art of leisure. Her paintings depict Black bodies in slow motion: playing tennis or pool, lounging around having drinks or perhaps grooving to music. Proper leisure time is what nourishes the human spirit.

In America, sites of leisure for Black people have more often than not been inaccessible and racially charged. While Rose’s treatment of color and flatness of paint capture one’s attention, it is the content of her work that invites further thought: What does it mean for Black bodies to experience leisure when to be Black in America is to live through a continuous cycle of grind culture, protest, survival, and exhaustion?

Art history abounds with representations of people in states of leisure across space, time, and place. For instance, in modern Western society, scenes of people enjoying free time were a favorite subject of Impressionist and PostImpressionist painters such as Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, George Seurat, Auguste Renoir, and so on. Leisure activities -swimming, reading, walks in the park- were divided along race, class, and gender lines. It was really only the upper and bourgeois classes who had access to free time and leisure activities. None of these iconic examples from the history of Western art depict Black people in repose.

Rose’s relaxed figures challenge centuries of demands for Black labor and instead, finds empowerment through leisure. Her vivid scenes, meticulously rendered in paint, invite joyful, playful, envious, and optimistic ways of seeing Black bodies. Conceptually, she shows that her subjects can do more in art and life than signify struggle. Instead, the artist represents Black bodies in vignettes and non-linear narratives. Her subjects are in conversation or engaged in leisure. Their active recreation celebrates the joy of mental and physical prowess. Beauty, indoors and outside, gives pleasure and relaxation. Her paintings exist in the world and are distinguished and exceptional for the tender intimacy and emotional depths they impart.

Sheena Rose often cites Monserrat-based author Yvonne Weeks’ book of poetry “Nomad” as a source of inspiration for her work. Week’s poetry is described as speaking to the “worlds we conjure and the inner world of the eternal wanderer.” I think, however, that Sheena Rose lives within her own rich interior and vibrant exterior world which enables and empowers her to reflect on her past and imagine her future.

For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or info@johanssonprojects.com

For more information, see https://johanssonprojects.com/exhibition/sheena-rose/ and https://www.sheenaroseart.com/

RAYMOND MAUGHAN

Annalee Davis soon to be exhibiting in ‘Spirit of the Land’ at the Nasher Museum of Art in the USA. ………………..

*From A Garden of Hope* is a collective of 30 drawings that are part of a small herbarium of plants I have collected from @walkersreservebarbados, pressed and drawn as a gesture of care through careful observation or ‘inner seeing’ as opposed to the a history of ‘overseeing’.

Twenty of these drawings are making their way to the @nashermuseum today for the upcoming Spirit in the Land exhibition curated by @toschoon

The show opens February 16 and includes 30 artists from North America and the Caribbean. It explores how our identities and natural environments are deeply interconnected.”

-Annalee Davis

Artists Studio Tours Barbados official launch of the 2023 Artists Studio Tours Barbados.

Artists participating Jeena Chatrani, Princess Bilinda Johnson, Heidi Berger, Julia Seymour, Jan Kevan Marcelo, Adriana

Seymour, Sian Pampellonne, Alison chapman-Andrews, Ann Rudder, Julianne Gill, Mario Holder, Lorna Wilson, Lois Crawford, Juliana Inniss, Gail Riley, Shaquille Hewitt, Laura Ward, Reginald Gill, Oneka Small, Kenneth Blackman, Maria Stanford, Margaret Herbert, Yasmin Vizcarrondo, Cathy Alkins, Hilary Armstrong, Margaret Rodriguez, Martina Pile, Tracey Williams, Steve Winsborough, Chris Inniss, Nicole Batson, Christopher Chandler, Cathy Cummins, Maureen Tracey https://www.facebook.com/artiststudiotoursbarbados https://www.artistsstudiotoursbarbados.com

Artists Studio Tours Barbados.

Over 30 artists, sculptors, ceramicists and potters are opening their studios.

March 11th and 12th, 11am-4pm www.artistsstudiotoursbarbados.com

Map here with all the studios with artist’s names and contact information. Interactive map QR code.

Bios and information on each participant been added in the comments section of this post.