Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times
Black Freedom Nebula: a meditation (for Folayemi Wilson’s Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times) Krista Franklin i. S.0.S.
ii. Deep Space sirius a. In the Beginning, Black was born an inky spread across the circumference of sky freckled with glittering rocks that surfaced from the cavern of her. Black became bored and birthed a universe for entertainment, the first TV, a projection of her imagination. What are the sounds of light? One late morning, Black got gas and belched the Sun, a ball of fire suspended in Black. Black picked her ‘fro, and stars scattered, a symphony of hiss and wink in her wake. She thought, all children should have mothers, and formed the moon from cooling lava flicked from the sun’s surface. You can’t make this shit up. Black was so beastie she birthed an immeasurable universe. Black dutty wind to the singing rings of Saturn, and broke a sweat so wet, it birthed a billion water bodies. sirius b. Have you ever heard of a child who’s never seen a star? All light man-made and un-magnificent. No doubt, Edison stared into the sky for inspiration, how to harness luminescence, drag the moon into living rooms. Once there was an epileptic who used a star as a GPS, led an entire people to liberation. Even enslaved folks fell in love, wore the night as camouflage, and snuck off to touch, tender, in the blue bruise of inhumanity. Space is not the place, but even now there is a child trapped at a border, his eyes turned up to the borderless, using a constellation as comfort. If you want to find deep space, go inward. There is no more mystifying place than your mind; the final frontier between your ears. The ocean of your body sways with the moon, the wombs of women everywhere hypnotized by her call. What is the gravitational pull of blackness? The dusky matter of you is stardust, miniscule scatter from the sky. You wanna run the universe, but can’t even converse in universe. Every breathing thing you want to bridle and bend the knee, build walls, and bulldoze, drill into and fire hose. (If I say ‘dracarys’ will white privilege burn to dust?) Mother Earth is pregnant for the fifth time for y’all have knocked her up. The extraterrestrials peek through holes in the ozone, whisper about the bullies of the galaxy, the earthlings who measure time in dollar signs, who speak in tongues of barcodes and blood spill. What is the spell for invisibility?
iii. Neutron Star Structure on Black Imagination (with Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, André Breton, André Masson & Harry L. Shipman) The Crab pulsar revealed a number of puzzling phenomena: the quality of abstract black, a new sentence transposing the sky liberated from shotgun shells & white anxiety.
a glint of love. blowing glitter
over the red stripes
Black imagination
it’s a projection
We are little specks of dust on the earth. If the whole world is struck at the center of our sense of safety, based on these data, Blacks will form
of sound
a cleansing in us
at our least stable.
Only
we learn
the precise measurements
is
not corporeal
that induces in the emotion felt
at the moment
when, as human beings
of plant-animal infiniteness
a feminine & masculine temperance
and to not speak
SCARCITY can black freedom b(l)oom. & meditation
emotional core energy continuous suspension
of magician tricks in the key
bathed in
As a repetition:
The vernacular architecture of other realms floods the smallness of earthling egos, encourages us to contemplate the revelations: farewell to the familiar as a point of focus.
a sense of
of american mutilations
The past, present, and future are a continuous current of aquatic transmissions, a nonlinear star clock ticking a spiritual frequency like the flickering of Mother Board church fans during Sunday service.
of ritual
is an astral contour
What does it feel like observing time, light, shadow, hierarchies; blackness in chains, terrestrial imagination in deep participation with brutal imagination?
a safe space
Black imagination
Optical pulses too;
(What is the formula for escaping white privilege?)
To the neutron star
of metallic blues
the ether
Portions of “Black Freedom Nebula: a meditation” were constructed from the cut-up method, and contain fragments and echoes from the writings of Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, André Breton, André Masson, and Harry L. Shipman’s Black Holes, Quasars, and the Universe. Section i., “Postcard to Space,” is from Aural Anarchy, a poetry collection and album inspired by the life and music of Jimi Hendrix. The album was a collaboration between Alison Chesley (Helen Money) and Krista Franklin, and was released on naïveté records in 2007. Section ii. of “Black Freedom Nebula” contains an interpolation of a line from Tricky’s “Makes Me Wanna Die,” and Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain.”
Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times It’s a universe … -Sun Ra1 My first introduction to Afrofuturism was through Alice Coltrane’s album Journey to Satchidananda (1971). Although I was not aware of the term at the time, and am not sure she would call it that, Coltrane’s transcendental music, which featured Pharoah Sanders (sax and percussion), Cecil McBee (bass) and Majid Shabazz (bells and tambourine), took one on a meditative and timeless journey into a spiritual cosmos. Inspired by her studies of the teachings of Swami Satchidananda, Coltrane integrated the harp in blissful ways with what was then fairly avant-garde music. I was a young, nerdy, somewhat hippyish adolescent around the time I discovered the album, running the streets of Harlem with one of my brothers who introduced me to Black Nationalism and meditation at the National Black Theatre of Harlem–an essential practice I maintain to this day. Ankh necklaces as markers of knowledge of an Egyptian past, and elephant hair bracelets (now banned) as African symbols of good luck, were popular in the street stalls of 125th Street in 1970s Harlem. Along with Samuel Weiser books, an occult publisher near Astor Place in the Village, I frequented Lewis Michaux’s National Memorial African Bookstore and the Tree of Life bookstores run by Kanya McGee, whom we called Dr. Kanya on 125th Street. These were sites of Pan-Africanism, and historical, metaphysical and spiritual education. They attempted to counter the effects of racism, Western miseducation, social and civic disinvestment, and crack that had been allowed to devastate many of Harlem’s Black and poor inhabitants, the effects disassembling and destroying important social infrastructures and cultural economies. These sites of consciousness raising took Black is Beautiful pride into philosophical and intellectual territory, promoting and celebrating a Black past and a Black future’s potential to overcome the oppressive forces stepping on Black people’s necks. Sadly, after a long and protracted protest of resistance, both sites were closed or torn down supposedly to make way for a new state office building. With the destruction of these examples of positive Black institutional and entrepreneurial productivity, many of us felt the pain of a deliberate and organized racist conspiracy that blocked our progress. It felt so personal.
Those adolescent years introduced me to practices that expanded my sense of self and gave me spiritual agency and a connection to a universal consciousness not unlike what Coltrane was expressing in her music. I learned concepts of time, space and history that are nonlinear and part of a spiritual and philosophical identity that imagines freedom in a Black universe and future. I learned later in my graduate studies that a philosophy central to an ancient African heritage is that the past, present and future exist simultaneously. This is how I think of Afrofuturism. In my youth, there was meditation, chanting, Kemet and Nile River studies, past-life readings, happenings, yoga, and then there was the musician, philosopher, and poet Sun Ra, whose music, performances and poems were as popular as the Last Poets (whom I consider the first populist rappers), that were Harlem neighbors. Much of this, along with my adventures into spirituality and African cosmology with the National Black Theatre, form the basis of my introduction to Afrofuturist concepts and the human potential in the self. These philosophies transcend a corporeal present and exercise embodiments of Blackness that express a freedom that the Black imagination provides as a technology of resistance and self-determination. Many decades later, my exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times, is a homage to those that connected me with this knowledge at such a young age, a gift to those of you that visited the exhibition and hopefully enjoyed a space to connect with and reflect on your goodness, and an offering to those forces in the universe that would have us prevail and emerge out of the shadows of love during these times of great chaos, uncertainty, upheaval, darkness and ignorance. I thank the greater community and staff of the Hyde Park Art Center, Allison Peters Quinn for the invitation with a nod to Hilesh Patel, Andi Crist (their hardworking preparator), Dawoud Bey (chair) and the Host committee; Norman Teague, Thomas Melvin and other volunteers mentioned elsewhere, and Chelsea Frazier along with Joelle, Krista, Ben, and Melanie and Matt at Candor Arts for their gifts to me. Folayemi (Fo) Wilson Chicago, 2019 1 “If They Only Knew,” from Strange Worlds in My Mind (Space Poetry Volume One); Norton Records, Cosmic Myth Music, released 2010.
Otherworldly, Familiar: A Black Feminist Eco-Critic’s Response to Fo Wilson’s Dark Matter Fo Wilson’s Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times is an expansive and blackened 2,400-square-foot exhibition. For some, that description might sound ominous, yet the opaque walls, watery-blue hue of the ground, and faint soundscape that fills the space cradles each viewer in gentleness. It takes only a few steps beyond the entrance for visitors to surrender to a meditative experience where walking can melt into a sense of floating in an atmosphere that is wholly otherworldly, yet tranquilly familiar. Endless pages of art historical texts, critical theory, and curators’ notes speak to the ways that art encourages us to think--to think about the philosophies that organize our lives, to consider the validity of our most rudimentary assumptions, and to rethink solutions to our most pressing historical and political concerns. On the contrary, some of our most powerful art calls us to reflect on information that our thoughts can rarely contain or explain--our feelings! Dark Matter invites us to draw inward while simultaneously unfolding beyond the conscious mind in order to awaken our most primordial sensations. This is no incidental effect of the work, but rather a result of the artist’s intentions to create an experience where the viewer can be held, yet can also be out of control. This experience, in Wilson’s words, feels how “being in the womb feels, right?...That’s our most primal experience that our body knows but we can’t articulate.” Wilson’s work as an artist, designer, educator, curator, and writer speaks volumes of her technical expertise—particularly as that expertise manifested in her 2016 work Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities
(Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee). Dark Matter, her most recent installation, represents an evolution of the narrative quality captured so effectively in Curiosities. This evolution revealed in Dark Matter is a direct result of Wilson’s dedication to trusting her intentions, minding her intuition, and committing to a process of collaborative experimentation with her team, the soundscape artist Joelle Mercedes and master muralist Thomas Melvin. Most importantly however, Wilson had to trust the intuition of the floating orbs, blackened wall-bound sparkles, loose gravel, and the wood sculptures that came together to compose the ecology of the space. When describing her creative process Wilson notes that, “The first thing was to get the overall sense of the space to sparkle, to feel otherworldly. Then from there it made everything else fall in place. At first with these orbs, I actually wanted to dress them with different materials. I tried so many different materials—hair, fake hair, macramé. […] The way I work, I dialogue with the work. Sometimes […] the work says, ‘Oh this is awesome. I’m loving it.’ Sometimes the work says, ‘Get this off of me.’ I kept trying and it just kept not working and I’m just like, ‘Okay, you win.’ I hung [the orbs] in my studio first, and they looked like how they were supposed to look. They looked like little spheres and moons. But then I [felt] like, they need a little home. So we decided on putting them on the rocks. It evolved as it was being installed. I felt things. ‘This feels right, this doesn’t feel right.’ That was the most challenging thing to do. But it just kind of came together.” At first glance, the way that Wilson describes her process of “dialoguing with the work” seems conversant with ideas prominent in new materialist studies. New materialism asks how the forces, agency, and activities of a variety of materials including humans, minerals, flora, and fauna, interact with and against each other. New materialism also questions our presumptions about the divisions between humans and the more-thanhuman world. Feminist scholar Mel Chen proposes a theory of “animacy”
to help us to interrogate the effects of these divisions further. According to Chen, “Animacy activates, new theoretical formations that trouble and undo stubborn binary systems of difference, including dynamism/stasis, life/death, subject/object, speech/nonspeech, human/animal, natural body/ cyborg.”1 These stubborn binaries we cling to in the West often make it difficult for us to recognize the agency of the objects/nonhumans that we commune with because we assume the supremacy of our agency and desires as subjects/humans. Further investigation into Wilson’s work and the creative wellspring from which she draws, reveals that her process of dialoguing with the objects is conversant with West African Indigenous spiritual systems such as Ifa or Akom. These systems have observed the actant qualities of non-human objects, long before New Materialism derived itself from Western abstract thought and claimed itself as “new.” Wilson’s work and the processes by which it comes together then, presents an opportunity for us to acknowledge the ways that Western forms of abstract thought both derive from and connect to African indigenous spiritual philosophies. Her work also demonstrate the fruitful restorative effects that emerge when we acknowledge rather than obscure these links. Connection is key and what makes Fo Wilson’s Dark Matter so inarguably refreshing is the ways it tenderly encourages us to connect to others by first connecting with ourselves. The softly floating orbs and intergalactic starship nestled within the installation transports visitors deep into an imagined Black future while also offering access to a precious kind of retreat. The retreat that Wilson gifts visitors is a return to being held in the womb-like effect of warm, loving, feminine Blackness. And in these troubled times, we could all use a little, or a lot, of holding. Chelsea Mikael Frazier, Ph.D Faculty Fellow, Department of English Cornell University
1 Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2012) p. 3 (emphasis mine)
A Transformative Encounter The golden record that traveled on spacecraft Voyager in 1977 serves as a touchstone for artist and designer Folayemi (Fo) Wilson in producing this album and the featured exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times (2019). The brilliant disc incorporated scientific diagrams, historical images, nature sounds, music from Bach to Louis Armstrong, and examples of 55 different languages—all in an effort to express the diversity and knowledge of our civilizations on earth. In addition to archival content, this famed record contained messages of peace from world leaders to greet exterrestrial life. Scientists had transformed a common object of popular culture into an advanced tool for diplomacy, documentation, and design. An enthusiast of historical material in all forms, Wilson added a commemorative edition of the golden record to her own vinyl collection in 2017. That album’s content and efficient design complimented Wilson’s contemporary art practice of mixing historical reference and futuristic, utilitarian visual forms to create artwork that alters our perspective on the contemporary experience. Wilson imagined the installation of new sculpture, sound, and video presented at Hyde Park Art Center as a loving response from those celestial beings after hearing the golden record, and finding the earth in disrepair. Clay, wood, glitter, paint, and rock are the simple materials that Wilson combined with soundscapes by Joelle Mercedes and NASA videos, revealing the surfaces of the sun and moon, which generated a rare and introspective experience. The darkened gallery held suspended small orbs and a large geometric sculpture that produced the sensation of depth, buoyancy, and smallness in relation to the human body. In her first large-scale gallery installation, Wilson welcomed the viewer to take pause in this expanded space, to find calmness, and to feel connected to all things. Finding comfort in smallness is a liberating feeling. Rather than sense the weight of the world’s insecurity and aggression swirling around in digital waves, a lightness comes from understanding that we are a part of something bigger—a lineage, a
society: excess and ego-driven pursuits. The installation joins us on a human level, and aligns with Wilson’s Afrofuturist worldview that she describes in her own written statement in this publication. Ultimately, Wilson is expressing the need to move our minds beyond what we think we know—the established economic, political, and social systems that keep humankind divided. We can instead inhabit a new space of kindness and enlightenment. *** On behalf of the Hyde Park Art Center, sincerest gratitude goes out to the many institutions, foundations, and individuals that generously contributed to make Dark Matter a success. The Arts/Industry Program, a residency program administered by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, assisted Wilson in creating the ceramic works, C.O.L. no(s). 1 - 22 (2018). We are honored to have Columbia College Chicago also lend their support to the project by providing a faculty grant to Wilson to complete the work. Hyde Park Art Center commissioned sculpture zora-b: 1891.1917.1960. 2006, which would not have been possible without the enthusiasm, support, and confidence of Board Members Dawoud Bey, John Ellis, Richard Wright and Valerie Carberry in garnering additional assistance from others. We are extremely grateful for the generous contributions of the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Graham Foundation for the Advancement of Art and Architecture to ensure that we produced an LP record in collaboration with Candor Arts documenting the aural experience of the exhibition as well as the visual experience skillfully photographed by Tom Van Eynde and Tran Tran. We are also thankful to scholar Chelsea Frasier for applying her eco-feminist lens in leading a public conversation with Wilson in April, which informed her insightful essay here. We also thank sonic artist Joelle Mercedes, musician and storyteller Benjamin LaMar Gay, and artist and poet Krista Franklin for creating new works in response to Wilson’s otherwordly atmosphere. All of these contributions add imaginative layers to the inclusive worldview expressed in Dark Matter.
culture, a universe. This humbleness and awe is also the physical experience created by Wilson in Dark Matter, and is antithetical to the values of modern American
Allison Peters Quinn Curator and Director of Exhibition & Residency Programs
Exhibition Checklist Folayemi (Fo) Wilson: zora-b: 1891.1917.1960. 2006 2019 Poplar, paint, hardware 16 feet x 15 feet x 3 inches each C.O.L. no(s). 1 - 22 2019 Slipcast and glazed porcelain Dimensions variable Soundscapes by Joelle Mercedes: Spirit Cycles, 2019 37:15 minutes A Ballad in Three Parts, 2019 18:05 minutes Horn Pulse, 2019 16:05 minutes The three soundscapes are audio messages delivered as puzzles. Each piece contemplates the human experience in its stages of transformation, devotion, ambivalence, joy and tension. Through the use of original and appropriated audio samples, digital instruments, melodic loops and field recordings, I invite the audience to locate the puzzles in the space, assemble them in whichever order they choose and allow themselves to experience a nocturnal suffusion in a whisper or in a high pitch tone.
Video work sourced from NASA VIDEO: Moonlight (Claire de Lune), 2018 Digital video Courtesy of NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio The visualization uses a digital 3D model of the Moon built from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter global elevation maps and image mosaics. The lighting is derived from actual Sun angles during lunar days in 2018. http://svs.gsfc.nasa. gov/4655
An Explosion on the Sun, 2016 Digital video Courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Images courtesy of NASA/GSFC/SDO On April 17, 2016, an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This video was captured in several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is color-coded in SDO images for easy viewing. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12229
Folayemi (Fo) Wilson
Joelle Mercedes
Krista Franklin
Ben LaMar Gay
Folayemi (Fo) Wilson is an object and image maker whose work celebrates Black
Joelle Mercedes is an artist and educator who has presented works in various forms
Krista Franklin is a writer and visual artist whose work has appeared in Poetry,
Ben LaMar Gay is a composer and cornetist who moves sound, color, and space
femme representation and the Black imagination as a technology of resistance
at: TrueQué Residencia Artística (Ayampe, Ecuador), ACRE Projects, Links Hall,
Transition Magazine, The Offing, Black Camera, Copper Nickel, Callaloo, BOMB
through folkloric filters to produce electro-acoustic collages. His unification of
and self-determination. Her work explores the Black Atlantic experience though
Chicago Cultural Center, Compound Yellow, Roman Susan, Threewalls, Sherman
Magazine, and the anthologies Encyclopedia, Vol. F-K and L-Z, The Long Term:
various styles is always in service of the narrative and never solely a display of
sculptural and multimedia installations presenting speculative fictions that reference
Park Branch Library, Hyde Park Arts Center, Sullivan Galleries (Chicago), Lynden
Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom, The End of Chiraq: A Literary
technique. A Chicago native, Ben’s true technique is giving life to an idea while
history integrating inspiration from American vernacular architecture, literature and
Sculpture Garden Gallery (Milwaukee) and the California Institute Of The Arts
Mixtape, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and
exploring and expanding on the term “Americana.”
science fiction, using original sculpture, found objects, archival media, sound and
(Valencia, CA) . Joelle recently participated in Strange Attractors, a book project
Gathering Ground. She is the author of Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books),
video. Her process utilizes her training in art history and critical theory employing
curated by Nomaduma Rosa Masilela for the 10th Berlin Biennale: We Don’t Need
the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts) and the chapbooks Killing Floor
By being active in Chicago’s experimental music scene and having spent a three-
the archive and other research methods to mine history for use as material in her
Another Hero (2018). He currently lives in Chicago, IL, producing works that
(Amparan) and Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books).
year residency in Brazil, Ben has collaborated with several influential figures in the
creative practice. Wilson earned a MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island
reconfigure colonial residue, behavioral patterns of mammals, and the lecture format
School of Design with a concentration in Art History, Theory & Criticism. She has
to develop new modes of storytelling.
world of music, including Joshua Abrams, the Association of the Advancement of Franklin is a frequent collaborator with fellow artists, most notably contributing
Creative Musicians, Bixiga 70, Black Monks of Mississippi, Celso Fonseca, George
been a grant recipient of the Graham Foundation for Advance Studies in the Fine
writing to performances, prints, audio recordings and film voiceovers for the projects
Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Theo Parrish, Mike Reed, Tomeka Reid, and Itibere
Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Propeller Fund. Her writing
of Cauleen Smith; the text of Ayanah Moor’s hand-painted signs for the performance
Zwarg.
and reviews have appeared in NKA, Journal of Contemporary African Art, the
“Untitled (OFFERINGS);” and poetry for Erin Christovale and Amir George’s
International Review of African American Art (IRAAA), among other publications.
catalog Black Radical Imagination (Dominica). She is one-third of the artist collective
Ben received his Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from Northeastern Illinois
Wilson was the 2013-14 Inaugural Faculty Fellow at the Center for Black Music
du monde noir, the co-curator of the Chicago citywide poetry and art initiative,
University. He has served as a music instructor in Chicago Public Schools, a guest
Research (CBMR) and has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE,
EKPHEST: A Festival of Art + Word, and co-founder of 2nd Sun Salon, a convening
lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a facilitator with the
Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Djerassi, Kohler Arts/Industry program, Haystack,
space for writers, visual and performance artists, musicians and scholars of color.
Chicago Park District’s Inferno Mobile Recording Studio for six years. The latter
MacDowell Colony, and Purchase College/SUNY Purchase New York. Wilson is an
helped set the tone for a core philosophy that fuels his musicianship, a fundamental
Associate professor at Columbia College Chicago in the department of Art & Art
Her work has been exhibited at Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery,
component of which explores the lineage of an idea passed from one generation to
History. Her design work is included in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt National
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Produce Model, Studio Museum in Harlem,
another. He aims for his work to have the same functionality as most folktales, which
Museum of Design. She is on the board of the American Craft Council and was
Chicago Cultural Center, The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, The Columbia Museum of
is to create variations on timeless themes to help people make sense of their existence
honored as a 3Arts awardee in 2015.
Art, National Museum of Mexican Art, Salina Art Center, and the set of 20th Century
and place in the world.
Fox’s Empire. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, 3Arts “Make A Wave” Award, Propeller Fund, Albert P. Weisman Award,
With the celebrated release of his debut album, Downtown Castles Can Never
and held residencies at Salina Art Center, the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public
Block the Sun (International Anthem, 2018) and multiple commissions, Ben is
Life, and A Studio in the Woods. She is also one of the main characters in the film
establishing his unique place and voice in the creative ecosystem. He has received
Les Impatients by Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quiros. She is a Cave Canem fellow,
artist residencies from Edgar Miller Legacy Glasner Studios and the Red Bull Music
and holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago. She
Academy. His range of performances and creative projects span from his hometown
currently teaches Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
in Chicago’s very own Symphony Center and across the globe to places such as Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Poland, and the Netherlands. Ben’s musical influences derive from his collection of experiences in all of the Americas and the gathered data channeled by technology and its amplifying accessibility. The fact that the world is closer via technology and that everyone has access to the possibility of exploring different ideas makes his avant-garde version of “Americana” very global. Embracing global vision while remaining true to his roots, Ben aligns his creative output with the honest notion that he only knows how to be a man from the South Side of Chicago.
Hyde Park Art Center
Funders
Board of Directors: Chair Richard Wright Vice Chair Julie Guida
Generous support for the exhibition and catalog is provided in part by Columbia College Chicago, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Host Committee led by Dawoud Bey, John Ellis, Richard Wright and Valerie Carberry. The ceramic artwork included was produced with assistance from the Arts/Industry Program at the John Michael Kohler Art Center.
Secretary Janis Kanter*
Artist Assistance
Treasurer Justine Jentes Current Board Members Dawoud Bey, Martha Clinton, Erika Dudley, Lawrence J. Furnstahl*, Theaster Gates, Dedrea Gray, Kate Groninger, Cynthia Heusing, Deone Jackman*, Kineret Jaffe, Edward G. Lance IV*, Trinita Logue, Lauren Moltz, Sundeep Mullangi, John Oxtoby, Yumi Ross, Jason Saul, Robert Sullivan, Kim Taylor, Angela Williams Walker, Linda Warren, Amanda Williams, Satannia Williams Sustaining Board Tim Brown, Louis D. D’Angelo, Sonya Malunda, Sandra Perlow, Melissa Weber, Karen Wilson
Provided by Dillan Achecompong, Raymond Arnecilla, Paige Bray, Andi Crist, JP Culligan, Joe Horejs, Betsy Johnson, Lorenz King, Ethan Larkin, Bryant McGee, Thomas Melvin, Michelle Nordmeyer, Olivia Page, Keith Schnabel, Dorian Sylvain, Norman Teague, and Brayden Windham.
LP Production Produced by Folayemi (Fo) Wilson Writing & Arrangement — Music by Ben Lamar Gay, Words by Krista Franklin Engineer — Recorded and mixed by Alex Inglizian, Recording Assistance by Jennie Simonson Record Mastered by Carl Saff Record pressed by Smashed Plastic Pressing
*Former Board Chair LP label photography by Tran Tran Hyde Park Art Center is a unique resource that advances contemporary visual art in Chicago by connecting artists and communities in unexpected ways. As an open forum for exploring the artistic process, the Art Center fosters creativity through making, learning about, seeing, and discussing art—all under one roof. The Art Center is funded in part by: Allstate Insurance Company; Alphawood Foundation; Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts; Bank of America; Bloomberg Philanthropies; a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Crown Family Philanthropies; David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation; Field Foundation of Illinois; Harper Court Arts Council; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Irving Harris Foundation; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; The Joyce Foundation; Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince; National Endowment for the Arts; Polk Bros. Foundation; The Reva and David Logan Foundation; Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust; and the generosity of its members and people like you. © 2019 by Hyde Park Art Center All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher. Installation photography by Tran Tran and Tom Van Ende Edited by Allison Peters Quinn, Asha Iman Veal and Noah Hanna
Audience Participation — Hannah Lawson, Noémi Michel, Adia Skyes Technical Support — Andi Crist, Nico Michael, Hannah Lawson Recorded July 11, 2019 at Hyde Park Art Center as part of the exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times by artist Folayemi (Fo) Wilson (March 31, 2019 – July 14, 2019) Black Freedom Nebula: a meditation © Krista Franklin Blé And The Darkness Above It’s Fields © Ben LaMar Gay Soundscapes © Joelle Mercedes Exhibition artwork © Folayemi (Fo) Wilson Unless noted otherwise All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the authors Catalog Produced by Candor Arts LLC Digital offset printing and hot foil stamping on Cougar Smooth, STARDREAM Anthracite & Onyx Papers in News Gothic MT & Minion Pro typeset.