[Many thanks to art historian Nikki Marcel for bringing this item to our attention.] Curated by Alpesh Kantilal Patel, “Transparency and Opacity” brings collectively paintings by Jacek J. Kolasiński and Edouard Duval-Carrié. The exhibition is on view by June 16, 2023, at UrbanGlass (647 Fulton Avenue, Brooklyn, New York).
Description: Caribbean poet, theorist, and scholar Edouard Glissant writes that “opacity” is the correct of the topic to not be identified and is a situation for a creolized and moral world to emerge. This exhibition, Transparency and Opacity, brings collectively work by artists Jacek J. Kolasiński and Edouard Duval-Carrié that play with “gentle” to current gender, sexuality, faith, area, and nationality as at all times in transformation. Kolasiński presents elements of his ongoing Creole Archive (2015-present) that examines the connections between the dark-sinned, doleful Black Madonna of Częstochowa and the Haitian Vodou spirit Ezili Dantò, the patron saint of single moms, lesbians, and those that establish as transgender and nonbinary and is thought for her vengeance and rage. The Madonna is assumed to have been dropped at Haiti by Poles within the early nineteenth century. By means of a wall of back-lit colourful plexi works, Duval-Carrié evokes Ezili Fréda, usually linked to the glamour of pre-Hattian revolutionary mulattas. Fréda is the flamboyant Haitian African spirit of affection, magnificence, jewellery, dancing, luxurious, and flowers. Each artists’ works level to the emancipatory high quality of opacity within the face of histories of violence and subjugation of the Caribbean.
Concerning the Artists:
Dr. Jacek J. Kolasiński is an affiliate professor of artwork and the founding director of the Ratcliffe Incubator of Artwork + Design at Florida Worldwide College (FIU). He has a PhD in Effective Arts from the Academy of Effective Arts in Warsaw and an MFA in Visible Arts from FIU. He lives in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Kraków, Poland, the place he studied historical past and philosophy at Jagiellonian College. His work has been supported by grants from the Getty Library and Oolite Arts, amongst others, and exhibited internationally. He’s an honorary member of the Artwork Academy of Latvia.
Edouard Duval-Carrié was born in Port-au-Prince. His household emigrated to Puerto Rico whereas he was a baby in the course of the François Duvalier regime. Duval-Carrié studied on the Université de Montréal and McGill College in Canada earlier than graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola Faculty, Montréal, in 1978. He later attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, from 1988 to 1989. He resided in France for a few years however now lives amongst Miami’s substantial Haitian immigrant inhabitants.
Concerning the Curator:
Alpesh Kantilal Patel is affiliate professor of latest artwork at Tyler College of Artwork and Structure, Temple College, Philadelphia. His artwork historic scholarship, curating, and criticism replicate his queer, anti-racist, and transnational method to up to date artwork. He’s the writer of Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Artwork Histories (2017) and is at the moment engaged on his monograph A number of and One: Writing Queer World Artwork Histories, below contract with Manchester College Press.
This exhibition was made attainable with the assistance of the Inexperienced Household Basis and The Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance. [When visiting the Agnes Varis Art Center, please be aware that this exhibition contains sensitive content referencing the history of trans-Atlantic colonization, enslavement, and their ongoing impacts.]
Learn the digital essay right here!
For extra info, https://urbanglass.org/occasions/element/transparency-opacity
[Photo above and all exhibition photography is by Blaine Davis.]