BmoreArt

This Week:  Visions of the Future panel discussion at Pratt Library, Zoë Charlton: The Domestic at C. Grimaldis Gallery, Amani Lewis + Erin Fostel at the Gallery in Baltimore City Hall, ANOTHER COUNTRY, Terrault’s Final Show, and more!

BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.

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Mixed Media Speaker Series: Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros
Tuesday, March 10 • 6pm
@ MICA Lazarus Center

Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros will lecture on the curatorial efforts and strategies needed to stimulate uncompromising dialogues about Latin America’s most pressing socio-political issues.  By using Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ work What Else Can We Talk About? as a case study, which was included in the 2009 Venice Biennale through Espinosa de los Monteros’ support, the talk will unfold the mechanics of transparency that resisted the institutional backlash to the artist’s raw representations of Mexico’s complex reality.  Furthermore, Espinosa de los Monteros will reflect on the necessity of engaging the public with uncomfortable cultural manifestations as a method to promote social awareness and change.

VOICES: Valerie Maynard
Wednesday, March 11 • 7-8pm
@ Church of the Redeemer

Valerie Maynard, sculptor, teacher, printmaker and designer in conversation with Chris Bedford, Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Visions of the Future | Panel Discussion
Wednesday, March 11 • 7-8:30pm
@ Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Branch

Featuring artists Valeria Fuentes, Phaan Howng, and Kate Reed Petty. Moderated by Sheri Parks. Celebrate the Year of the Women with a conversation looking to the future of women’s lives and work. Sheri Parks will lead a panel exploring Apocalyptic/Utopic narratives. The panel brings together multidisciplinary artists in conversation to share how they interpret their experiences the world. Valeria Fuentes was born in Bolivia but raised in Baltimore. She is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, cultural producer, and arts educator. She now runs a platform for immigrants called Roots & Raíces. Phaan Howng is a Baltimore based Taiwanese American multidisciplinary art practice centers around creating various narratives and landscapes that reflect nature thriving in a utopian post-human planet, or what she terms an “optimistic post-apocalypse.” Kate Reed Petty is a writer, feminist, and environmentalist.

Authentic Realities | Opening Reception
Thursday, March 12 • 6-8pm
@ Catalyst Contemporary

Catalyst Contemporary presents “Authentic Realities,” an art exhibition featuring new work from the recent artist addition to their growing roster. Sobia Ahmad, Damon Arhos, and Erick Antonio Benitez’s works speak uniquely about their constantly evolving communities, challenging the status quo, and creating a better common future.

The phrase, Authentic Realities, defines a growing movement in contemporary art. Each artist in this movement has a direct link to their subject matter or the starting point for their creativity is based in reality — a real event or set of experiences acting as the core of their practices. The resulting works speak to illustrate their experiences, often referencing, not focused solely on past events, personal or cultural connections, and link them to the present. As well, all of these artists have social and community components. They seek to address, normalize, and give visibility to the communities they belong to, and to bring the issues facing each group to the forefront of mainstream culture.

Currently, a wide swath of contemporary art is thrusted into the umbrella of Post-Modernism and the many iterations of Post-Post-Modrenism. However, as we move deeper into the 21st century, cohesive trends emerge. Ahmad, Arhos, and Benitez are not the first artists to utilize the key components of the Authentic Realities movement. They are joining the ranks of others such as Felix Gonzales-Torres, Paul Rucker, Doris Salcedo, Joyce J Scott, Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson whose mediums, methods, and techniques vary but all reference the past to comment on the present and seek to change the future.

“Authentic Realities” is a direct response to the current socio-political environment riddled with divisiveness, fracturing of civil cohesion, a renewed fear of “others,” and the loss of a clear sense of what is real and who has the power to fabricate and dictate our shared realities. By basing their practices, subject matters, and storytelling in reality, Ahmad, Arhos, and Benitez are expanding upon the types of stories told in mainstream culture and defining who is allowed to lead such expansions by authenticating our multitude of shifting realities. Their authentic work speaks of humanism and the common experience of home, self, and nature that we all share.

Exhibition Dates: March 12th – April 30th, 2020
Opening Reception: March 12th, 6-8PM
Artist Talk: April 25th, 3-4PM
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 2-6PM.

Zoë Charlton: The Domestic | Opening Reception
Thursday, March 12 • 6-8pm
@ C. Grimaldis Gallery

Grimaldis Gallery is pleased to present The Domestic, a solo exhibition of works by Zoë Charlton. In an investigation of race, power, and gender, Charlton’s large-scale collages immerse the viewer in lush bodily forms that explode into fragmented landscapes and expressive whimsy.

Zoë Charlton has dedicated her practice to the representation of the sexualized bodies of black women. She is at once calling out objectification and practicing celebration. Emerging from her figures are bursts of verdant flora, idealistic clouds, and waves of fowl in flight. These elements are made from found materials, referencing the play of childhood craft. Yet deep within the folds of greenery are hints of tourism and history. In a work from her Compromise Series “meant for the home-bred” (2019), Charlton depicts her grandmother’s Tallahassee home engulfed in foliage. She memorializes the home of Everlena Bates to emphasize the importance and power of the black matriarch.

Charlton’s figures draw the line between divinity and madness by combining smooth curves and hints of fertility with the chaos of dense collage. Her exhibition title, The Domestic, emphasizes the body’s relationship to class politics and the idea of home. Within The Domestic lies a duality of sanctuary and service – the home being a place of menial tasks and historically biased remuneration. This tension builds at the cores of these bodies, and erupts in a fantastical and visceral release.

Zoë Charlton has work in numerous public collections including the Phillips Collection, Arkansas Art Center, Birmingham Museum of Art, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She received a Grit Fund Grant and a Rubys Grant from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation in 2016 and 2014 respectively, as well as a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012. Zoë Charlton has had recent solo exhibitions at CulturalDC Mobile Arts Gallery, Penn State University’s HUB-Robeson Gallery, Gettysburg College’s Schmucker Gallery, and G Fine Art. She is currently an Associate Professor at American University and holds a seat on the Maryland State Arts Council. She is co-founder the collaborative art initiative ‘sindikit with artist Tim Doud.

Zoë Charlton: The Domestic will be on view from March 12 through April 18, 2020. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, March 12, 6 – 8 pm. Hours for C. Grimaldis Gallery, which is free and open to the public, are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 am – 5:30 pm.

Amani Lewis + Erin Fostel | Opening Receptions
Thursday, March 12 • 6-8pm
@ The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall

Amani Lewis unfolds Amani Lewis 1 Corinthians 12:14 in the South gallery. Erin Fostel presents A Room of Her Own in the North Gallery

Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young cordially invites you this Women’s History Month to the Opening Receptions for Amani Lewis’: Amani Lewis 1 Corinthians 12:14 in the South gallery and Erin Fostel’s A Room of Her Own in the North Gallery in Baltimore City Hall on Thursday, March 12th at 6:00PM. This event is free and open to the public. **Must present ID for entry into City Hall.**

For 1 Corinthians 12:14, the theme and inspiration is the Bible scripture, 1 Corinthians 12:14, which states, “For the body is not one member, but many.” For Amani Lewis, this passage unfolds the simplest and clearest statement about collaboration and teamwork. With this, Amani has collaborated with other artists (Devin Allen; Monica Ikegwu) as well as local entities (Squeegee Kids) to present and construct Baltimore’s unique culture.

A Room of Her Own is a new body work for Erin Fostel. A Room explores new imagery by shifting from public spaces to private rooms. The result is her haunting Women’s Bedroom Series meticulously rendered in charcoal and graphite on paper. Each of the bedrooms depicted brings one woman to the forefront without ever exposing her body. Here, in her space, she is free from objectification and expectation. Her figure is explicitly not shown. In her vacancy, the viewer must acknowledge and ponder, because of her absence, her full value to home and society.

The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions: Culture is Power
Friday, March 13 • 7pm
@ Baltimore Center Stage

“Art is not neutral. It either upholds or disrupts the status quo, advancing or regressing justice.” – adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy. In the current sociopolitical climate, as with many notable moments in our history, cultural expression has been an essential vehicle for activism, advocacy, and social change. Given the power of art to illuminate necessary truths, how should we consider the civic responsibility of the artist? Join us at Baltimore Center Stage as BCS Artistic Director Stephanie Ybarra, recently named one of the YBCA 100, helps us unpack the role of the artist in our civic imagination.

Admission is FREE, though reservations are encouraged.

Another Country: Terrault’s Final Show | Opening Reception
Friday, March 13 • 7-10pm
@ Terrualt

Terrault is pleased to announce its next exhibition ANOTHER COUNTRY, curated by Teri M. Henderson, opening on Friday, March 13th 7-10PM. We are humbled to announce that Terrault will be closing its doors and are overjoyed to host ANOTHER COUNTRY as our final endeavor in our space.

ANOTHER COUNTRY is a group exhibition that aims to highlight the work of artists that directly embody the elements of the Afro-Surreal. It specifically focuses on the making of worlds and the reclamation of what Black art is in times of turbulence and disruption. ANOTHER COUNTRY explores Afro-Surrealism; an aesthetic framework which serves as what Suzanne Césaire described as “the tightrope of our hope” – and in this show builds a bridge between the sacred and the profane. “The Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.” The artists in this exhibition excavate realities that are both adjacent and beyond; using video, sculpture and photography to uncover meanings and unearth truths often unseen.

ANOTHER COUNTRY transforms Terrault Gallery into a space filled with the work of Black creators and seeks to manifest another reality that is distinct and beautifully separate from the one in which we primarily inhabit. As D. Scott Miller wrote in Black Is The New Black A 21st Century Manifesto “Afro-Surrealists distort reality for emotional impact. Afro-Surrealists use excess as the only legitimate means of subversion, and hybridization as a form of disobedience. [and they] strive for rococo: the beautiful, the sensuous, and the whimsical.” Each artist within the exhibition echoes the ethos of Afrosurrealism. Visiting ANOTHER COUNTRY creates the opportunity for viewers to occupy a space where a new simultaneous reality reveals for a moment in time within the gallery– a miraculous transformation through the vehicle of Black contemporary art.

The work that composes ANOTHER COUNTRY is unique, subversive, marvelous, innate, tremendous, ethereal, incredibly beautiful, sometimes absurd, and continuously afro-surreal. The artists featured in ANOTHER COUNTRY include David Alekhuogie, Brandon Coley Cox, Abigail DeVille, Ariel René Jackson, Devin N. Morris, and Monsieur Zohore. ANOTHER COUNTRY is curated by Teri M. Henderson. The exhibition runs from March 13th, 2020 through April 23rd, 2020. The opening reception is Friday, March 13th from 7:00PM to 10:00PM at Terrault Gallery, 218 W. Saratoga Street 3rd Floor, Baltimore, MD 21201.

This exhibition was inspired by D. Scott Miller’s The Afro Surreal Manifesto in which he describes and defines the world-making nature of “the afro-surreal.” The title of this exhibition “ANOTHER COUNTRY” is a reference to the 1962 novel written by James Baldwin. Although Baldwin was not an afro-surrealist, he was Black artist who made worlds and built bridges between the dissimilar through art. This exhibition is an attempt to build bridges between the parallel worlds that exist for many Black people. The interior and the exterior. The past and the present, interjecting in the right now. Consistently Black creators masterfully assert themselves by defining themselves through their art. This act is an act of world-making. These creators are literally fabricating another country within this one that is so often ridden with despair.

Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1PM – 5PM
Selected Readings featuring Zion Douglass: Friday, March 27th from 7PM – 9PM
Closing Reception: Thursday, April 23rd from 7PM – 9PM

More details regarding the conclusion of Terrault to follow.

Baltimore Clayworks 40th Anniversary | Flora and Fauna Reception
CANCELED
@ Baltimore Clayworks

Your health and safety are our top priority. Out of precaution, our Flora and Fauna exhibitions reception and artist talk, scheduled for this Saturday, March 14th from 6-9pm, has been cancelled.

Instead, join us online for an artist talk with Eliza Au via Facebook Live and Instagram Live this Saturday, March 14th, at 5pm.

Our Flora and Fauna exhibitions are still open to the public, so stop in any day to check them out. We are open Tuesday – Sunday, 10am-5pm.

2020 Vision Community Day
CANCELED
@ Baltimore Museum of Art

This event has been canceled. Please visit the BMA website for more information.