JEWEL HAM and “CHUK” GABRIEL AMADI-EMINA – Exhibit @TheEubie with Curators DERRICK ADAMS and THOMAS JAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
This exhibition entices viewers with paintings depicting Black women, and women of color, in ways that accentuate their confidence and sexuality while covertly exposing dark realities that exist beneath the surface.
ABOUT JEWEL HAM
Jewel Ham is a senior at Howard University that uses her work to manipulate everyday realities. Interested in depicting experiences and other intangible emotional realities, her work is often set in familiar spaces, only to be challenged by the presence of the fantastic. These combined elements serve as allusions to a variety of themes requiring further discussion within our community, including black consumer culture, mental health, the internal monologue and more. By inserting unexpected imagery into paintings that would otherwise appear as safe spaces, the artist hopes to create conversations that challenge the viewers’ perception.
SHORT DESCRIPTION
This exhibition showcases photographic montages that explore narratives of struggle, resistance, and revelation.
ABOUT “CHUK” GABRIEL AMADI-EMINA
Chukwudumebi Gabriel Amadi-Eminais a Nigerian-American contemporary photographic & video artist, currently residing in the Baltimore area, Maryland. By combining his Nigerian roots with his ongoing experience as a black body in United States of America; Gabriel creates photographic narratives, embedded with performance & ritual, that reveal moments of those whose entireties are a result of the fusion of both their African-ness and blackness. Through portraiture (mostly self-portraiture), he interweaves pan-African perspective, effects and spirituality into western mythologies, allegories and misconceptions of the black body. Gabriel see’s the body as a conduit of truth to self, and truth of space. To not only navigate his personal intimate moments with blackness, but also challenge the way it is perceived, spiritually, mentally and physically.
ABOUT THE CO-CURATOR DERRICK ADAMS
Derrick Adams is a multidisciplinary New York-based artist working in performance, video, sound and 2D and 3D realms. His practice focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, exploring self image and forward projection.
A recipient of a 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and 2014 S.J. Weiler Award, Adams received his MFA from Columbia University, BFA from Pratt Institute, and is a Skowhegan and Marie Walsh Sharpe alum.
His exhibition and performance highlights include: Greater New York ’05, MoMA PS1; Open House: Working In Brooklyn ’04, Brooklyn Museum of Art; PERFORMA ‘05, ‘13, ‘15; Radical Presence & The Shadows Took Shape, Studio Museum in Harlem; The Channel, Brooklyn Academy of Music; and is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.
His work can be seen in New York at Tilton Gallery; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Gallerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris; and Vigo Gallery, London.
ABOUT THE CO-CURATOR THOMAS JAMES
A native of the Washington DC Metropolitan area, Thomas James began his work as an independent curator in 2015. Before coming to Baltimore and joining Creative Alliance in 2018, he responsible for crafting exhibitions with organizations such as Maryland Federation of Art, The Phillips Collection, Town Hall Education and Recreation Center (THEARC), The Jerusalem Fund, and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts.
Eventbrite