“Our goal is dialogue, not divisiveness,” Art at a Time Like This (ATLT) cofounders Anne Verhallen and Barbara Pollack say about their latest event, a two-day summit featuring panel discussions, live performances, illustrated lectures, and more.
“Dangerous Art/Endangered Artists” takes place June 7–8 at BRIC in Brooklyn, hosted by ATLT and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC). ATLT started on March 17, 2020, as an online community focusing on art as a direct response to what was happening in the world, from the pandemic lockdown to racial injustice. ARC began in 2017, helping international artists and cultural professionals of all disciplines connect to such resources as emergency funds, legal assistance, temporary relocation programs, and fellowships.
Among the summit participants are Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, American journalist and author Nikole Hannah-Jones, Cuban American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator Coco Fusco, Kenyan rapper Henry Ohanga aka Octopizzo, Native American artist and activist Demian DinéYazhi’, Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander, and Vietnamese singer and sound artist Mai Khôi. “I was born in Vietnam, where freedom of expression and artistic freedom have always been suppressed,” Mai Khôi, who recently performed her autobiographical show Bad Activist at Joe’s Pub, said in a statement. “I have had to become an activist to protect my right to be an artist because the artist inside me doesn’t want to be killed by the censorship system.”
TICKET GIVEAWAY: “Dangerous Art / Endangered Artists” takes place June 7-8 at BRIC in Brooklyn; tickets are $30 for one day and $50 for both, but twi-ny has two pairs to give away for free. Just send your name and favorite sociopolitical artist to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, June 3, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older, and all information will be kept confidential; two winners will be selected at random.
Here is the full schedule (times and participants subject to change):
Summit Day 1: Challenges Facing Artists in Authoritarian Regimes
Opening Remarks, with Anne Verhallen, cofounder and codirector, ATLT, 5:00
Keynote Speaker: Shirin Neshat in conversation with ARC artistic director Julie Trebault, 5:05
Performance: Henry Ohanga aka Octopizzo, 6:00
Artists at the Forefront of Social Movements, with Dread Scott and Samia Halaby, moderated by ATLT cofounder and codirector Barbara Pollack, 6:15
Resiliency in Exile: Rania Mamoun and Mai Khôi, moderated by Ethiopian American writer Dinaw Mengestu, 7:15
Closing Remarks: ARC artistic director Julie Trebault, 7:50
Reception, 8:15
Summit Day 2
Registration + Coffee, 10:30
Here and Now: Censorship as a Political Tool in the United States, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Aruna D’Souza, 11:00
Global Censorship: What It Looks Like, Who Does It, How to Combat It, with Coco Fusco, Omaid Sharifi, Khaled Jarrar, and Henry Ohanga AKA Octopizzio, moderated by Mari Spirito, 12:15
Is Censorship Discriminatory?, with Lorena Wolffer, Demian Diné Yazhi, and Shahzia Sikander, moderated by Jasmine Wahi, 3:30
Who: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, DJ YB, more What:DanceAfrica Festival 2024 Where:BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. When: May 24-27, many events free, Gilman dances $22-$95, film screenings $16 Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-seventh annual iteration focuses on Cameroon, with four companies performing “The Origin of Communities / A Calabash of Cultures” in BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, highlighting movement and music from the Central African nation. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, Salifou Lindou’s art installation La course 2,the Council of Elders Roundtable: Legacy & Preservation, and a late night dance party with DJ YB.
This year’s FilmAfrica screenings and cinema conversations range from Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa’s 1975 Muna Moto and Mohamed Challouf’s The Many Moods of Muna Moto to Jean-Marie Téno’s Colonial Misunderstanding, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s 2005 Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes), and Gordon Main’s 2023 London Recruits, all followed by Q&As with the directors.
“This year’s DanceAfrica is a journey into the heart of Cameroon, driven by a quest to explore the ancient roots of African culture and answer profound questions about humanity’s earliest origins,” Salaam said in his mission statement. “How timeless is Africa, and was it the land of the most ancient beings? What were the origins of humanity, thought, consciousness, art, culture, creativity, and civilization?”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Taking Venice examines 1964 biennale art scandal involving Robert Rauschenberg and the State Department
Who: Amei Wallach, Robert Storr What: Postscreening Q&As for Taking Venice Where:IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St. When: Friday, May 17, 7:15, and Saturday, May 18, 7:15 Why: “I grew up during the Cold War when the world seemed as dangerous as it does today. But it also seemed to be filled with possibility, with the actions of people who dreamed big and took big chances,” Amei Wallach says in the director’s statement for her latest documentary, Taking Venice. “This was especially true of artists, always looking to build something new. I became an art critic, then an author, and now a filmmaker. My goal is to make films about art that leap out of the art world and into a reckoning with what’s relevant in our lives through the stories that they tell. . . . Taking Venice builds on a tradition of telling the story of America then through the eyes of now because I want it to reflect how much the world and art have changed. I want there to be moments that sting with what we have lost, and moments that encapsulate what we have gained.”
Wallach is now back with her third film, Taking Venice, which invites viewers inside the controversy surrounding the 1964 Venice Biennale, where several forces might have teamed up in order to ensure that American artist Robert Rauschenberg would win the Golden Lion. The scandal involved art curators Alice Denney and Alan Solomon, art dealer Leo Castelli, and, perhaps, the US government, which saw Rauschenberg’s uniquely American pop art as a way to help fight communism. Among the people Wallach speaks with are artists Christo, Simone Leigh, Mark Bradford, Shirin Neshat, and Carolee Schneeman; authors Louis Menand and Calvin Tompkins; museum directors Valerie Hillings and Philip Rylands; 2007 Venice Biennale director Robert Storr; and Denney, who died this past November at the age of 101. Even Rauschenberg chimes in: “I had moments where I thought everything would be much better if I hadn’t been so lucky,” he says in an archival clip.
Taking Venice opens May 17 at IFC Center; Wallach will be on hand for Q&As following the 7:15 screenings on May 17 and 18, the latter joined by Storr.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Artist Richard Ayodeji Ikhide stands next to Mother’s Embrace at Candice Madey gallery (photo by Kunning Huang)
RICHARD AYODEJI IKHIDE: TIES THAT BIND WITH TIME
Candice Madey
1 Freeman Alley off Bowery
Tuesday – Saturday through June 15, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm www.candicemadey.com www.instagram.com/pandagwad
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide is having quite a week. He and his partner, Gina, had a baby on April 29 in London; Gina celebrated her birthday on May 2; Ikhide flew that day to New York City for the May 3 opening of his second solo show at Candice Madey on the Lower East Side, “Ties That Bind with Time”; and he then returned home for his newly expanded family’s first Mother’s Day together.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, and based in London, Ikhide studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and the Royal Drawing School. His first exhibition at Candice Madey’s 1 Rivington St. home, June 2022’s “Emiomo,” introduced the title character, a child emissary or messenger, inspired by West African spiritual beliefs and legends, who undergoes a metamorphosis with other figures in a fantastical world. He broadens that vision in the new show at Madey’s Freeman Alley space, in which Ikhide again incorporates his interests in weaving, textile design, comic books, manga, Nigerian mythology, and video games in large-scale watercolor, gouache, and collaged paintings on paper that are screwed into the walls. But this time, there’s a sharper focus on motherhood — and fatherhood — across generations. Each of the five works tells its own story, bursting with swirling colors that depict symbolic animals, ritualistic objects, and red and blue circles.
In Mother’s Embrace, a woman clutches her child, their eyes closed, their bond offering them protection from whatever they may face. In Familial Procession, a man and a woman march with several children, surrounded by floating faces; one of the kids emits a dialogue bubble with an abstract shape in it instead of recognizable words. And in Patriarch’s Principles, a family prepares for a ceremony at a table filled with artifacts.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I bumped into Ikhide at Madey’s Rivington gallery, where he generously agreed to sit down for an impromptu interview. “Ties That Bind with Time” is up through June 15, the day before Ikhide will experience his first Father’s Day as a new dad.
twi-ny: There’s a lot of imagery with children and a mother and father in these paintings. How did that evolve? You started this series before your partner was pregnant.
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide: I think obviously it’s that thing of bringing a new life into the world. It’s kind of like you have all these ideas and associations in terms of what you might think a family might be, or what you might want for your family. And I was saying to people that I felt like this body of work was almost a bit like a visual manifesto, for myself in terms of what I might want for my family unit and how I might want things to be. And one thing I was meditating a lot on was the role of the patriarch; even the word “patriarch” itself can be this oppressive figure in the family dynamic. It was something I really wanted to push against. It’s like a narrative around the idea of the patriarch not as this oppressive figure but also a nurturer, somebody who’s also propagating the life and the vitality of the family.
twi-ny: Fathers get short shrift sometimes.
rai: Exactly. I mean, I’m going to be a Black father; there are so many narratives around Black men and their children, their family units. I don’t want to be that kind of father. I really wanted to counteract or push against some of these narratives.
twi-ny: Why is that narrative still with us? I went out with a bunch of white friends recently and we got into political discussions, and those narratives came up, with some of them arguing that that’s what’s wrong with Black society.
rai: It’s funny because Oprah did a recent study that talked about participation amongst fathers, and African American fathers were quite high. [ed. note: OWN Spotlight: Oprah and 100 Black Fathers aired in June 2021.] A lot of African American fathers are quite active in their kids’ lives, but like you said, that’s a narrative that’s still propagated today. I’m from London, but that’s something that, across the waters, still affects how people view things. It’s been interesting for me. I’ve been to every single midwife visit. I was there in the delivery room. I was there for the baby’s first change. So that’s the role I would like to play in my child’s life. This body of work was a deep meditation on what kind of dad would I like to be, and what kind of family unit would I like to have. It was really interesting to bring it all together, even the whole nine months of seeing my partner’s body change and how she’s adapting. Okay, now we’ve had the baby, she’s breastfeeding, all these things. We’re doing this together. I love her to bits. It’s been both of us, like Bonnie and Clyde. Also, I’ve got a family to feed, so on a financial level I’m thinking, Hey, look. My wife’s been on maternity leave for a while so I’m literally paying for every single bill.
twi-ny: What does she do?
rai: She’s in marketing and research and strategy, so she works with brands and agencies like Sony and Converse. She’s taking time off work, so I can’t expect to be like, You need to chip in your share. That’s all on me now. We’re also talking about all the baby responsibilities, right? And the duty you have as a father, in terms of how you need to make sure your family unit is okay. So yeah, there’s a piece with the patriarch’s principles that’s right in the middle where, you know, you have this patriarchal figure almost giving assurance and direction and almost kind of like life lessons in the sense of okay, this is how you might want to go about doing certain things. I was talking to Jake [Borndal], the director of the gallery, about one thing I got into recently, and that’s all these stats about the involvement of fathers and how the odds for children in terms of their education, career, finances, economic literacy shoot up if the father’s involved. Society needs to also incentivize men to want to play an active role. But if you have this narrative of Oh, men are just going to traumatize their families, then it’s not necessarily incentivizing us.
twi-ny: They’re going to go out for cigarettes and not come back.
rai: Exactly. I’m at a point where, I don’t know, maybe it’s a bit idealist or utopian of me, but I’m like, Hey, maybe that’s the kind of work I would like to make, put that narrative out into society.
twi-ny: And that comes across in your show without preaching at the viewer.
rai: Yeah, exactly.
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide’s “Ties That Bind with Time” is on view at Candice Madey through June 15 (photo by Kunning Huang)
twi-ny: So you’re in London, and your wife gives birth four days ago.
rai: Yeah.
twi-ny: You are there at the birth.
rai: Yeah.
twi-ny: And then you’re on a plane, and you come here to give birth to this show. And tomorrow you’re going right back home.
rai: Yeah.
twi-ny: So what have these five or six days been like for you?
rai: Intense. I’m running on empty. I mean, a couple hours ago I was changing diapers. The night before I had to fly, the baby was waking up like every hour, and I’m like, Oh my god, she needs to eat again. I don’t think I’ve cried so much as in the past four days. Yesterday, towards the end of the opening, I was getting quite emotional because we were in a hospital for about four days, just preparing for it, because our baby was late, so the doctors were like, Okay, we might need to do this, we might need to do that, we might need to do this, and I’m just there like, No, I need to make sure my partner’s okay, she doesn’t want a C-section, no, we’re not doing that. So I was in practical, logical mode. And then Monday, when we came back home, I think that’s when all the emotions started to hit me. Like, Oh my god, we have a child.
And the funny thing is, my partner’s birthday was on Thursday, the night I flew out. So her and my daughter, they’re both Tauruses now — their birthdays are three days apart — I feel really appreciative and grateful to be able to have this experience in my life: a partner’s birthday, a child being born, a show opening.
twi-ny: And now Mother’s Day.
rai: Yeah, so it’s just been absolutely mind blowing, incredible for me. All I can say is I’m grateful, you know?
twi-ny: You look deliriously happy. It’s like there’s this aura around you.
rai: It’s just been incredible to work with the gallery, with Candice and the team, with Jake. They’ve both just been absolutely amazing and incredible, they’ve treated me well, so it’s been such a lovely experience. I know I’m here for only a short time, but it’s been absolutely stellar.
twi-ny: I’m glad I just walked into this, glad you were here.
rai: It’s a synchronous moment.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Bronx-born director Jerry Schatzberg is most well known for such films as The Panic in Needle Park,Scarecrow,The Seduction of Joe Tynan,Honeysuckle Rose, and Street Smart, gritty dramas with memorable images, featuring such stars as Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Alan Alda, Willie Nelson, Dyan Cannon, and Christopher Reeve. Now ninety-six, Schatzberg also has another side to his talent, his stunning photography.
Two years ago, Fotogafiska hosted the exhibition “25th & Park,” consisting of dozens of shots by Schatzberg in and around his Park Ave. South studio beginning in 1957, photos of the neighborhood as well as major and minor celebs.
Jerry Schatzberg, Andy Warhol at Factory, New York, 1966 (photo courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)
Morrison Hotel Gallery is currently presenting the bicoastal show “Motion Pictures — The Jerry Schatzberg Archive,” continuing through May 5 at 116 Prince St. (The partner exhibit in LA closed May 3.) Schatzberg himself was at the NYC opening, surrounded by fans, friends, and photos of Faye Dunaway, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Francis Ford Coppola, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Arlo Guthrie, Roman Polanski, Fidel Castro, Sharon Tate, Catherine Deneuve, Frank Zappa, Carmen De Lavallade, and many others. In the limited edition 2006 book Thin Wild Mercury: Touching Dylan’s Edge, Schatzberg explained, “Usually when I photograph somebody I spend as much time as I can with the subject before taking a picture. I’ll use any excuse to delay a shooting just to spend more time. It helps them relax and gives me more of an insight into the real self. If I didn’t take the time I’d be photographing myself.”
Jerry Schatzberg, Bob Dylan, Thumb in Eye, 1965 (photo courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)
Schatzberg photographed Bob Dylan often, including taking the famous shot used for the cover of Blonde on Blonde. “As a photographic subject, Dylan was the best,” Schatzberg wrote in the book. “You just point the camera at him and things happen. We had a good rapport and he was willing to try anything. . . . Dylan and I were quite close for a while, as close as Dylan will allow. Dylan has always been somewhat impenetrable. He cherishes his privacy, and wants his personal life undisturbed. I respected that and still do. Any time somebody wants a photograph of Dylan I have to know how it will be used. I’d hate to find one of my photographs of him selling toothpaste.”
In this collection, it would be hard to think of any of Schatzberg’s gorgeous photos being used to sell toothpaste.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who: Jordan Casteel, Joy Bivins, Rhea L. Combs, Thelma Golden, Tayari Jones, Christopher McBride, Tayari Jones, NSangou Njikam, Denise Murrell, more What: All-day symposium with lectures, conversations, and performances Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Ave., 1000 Fifth Ave. at Eighty-Second St. When: Saturday, April 27, free with RSVP, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Why: The exhibit of the year thus far is the Met’s “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” an eye-opening collection of more than 160 paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, and ephemera from the “New Negro” movement in Harlem between the 1920s and 1940s. Featuring works by Horace Pippin, Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, Hale Woodruff, James Van Der Zee, and others — alongside pieces by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, and more to provide context — the show is divided into such sections as “The Thinkers,” “Everyday Life in the New Black Cities,” “Portraiture and the Modern Black Subject,” “Debate and Synthesis: African and Western Aesthetics,” “A Language of Artistic Freedom,” “Cultural Philosophy and History Painting,” “European Modernism and the International African Diaspora,” “Luminaries,” “Nightlife,” “Family and Society,” and “Artist and Activist.”
On April 27, the Met will host “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism: A Creative Convening,” a free, all-day symposium consisting of live performances, lectures, and conversations with an outstanding lineup of artists, authors, educators, curators, museum directors, and other experts. The full schedule is below.
“Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have obscured and overlaid,” Alain Locke, who is featured prominently in the exhibition, explained in The New Negro in 1925. “All vital art discovers beauty and opens our eyes to beauty that previously we could not see.”
The revelation of the show is the little-known Archibald J. Motley Jr., a painter of extraordinary quality who immerses visitors in his dramatic scenes bursting with life; among his striking canvases on view are Jockey Club,Dans la rue,Blues,Cocktails, and Black Belt. He even gets his own section, “The New Negro Artist Abroad: Motley in Paris.”
“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too,” Langston Hughes wrote in 1926. “If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”
Be sure not to miss the final room, which contains Romare Bearden’s monumental 1971 six-panel Harlem tribute The Block, its own temple for tomorrow.
Saturday, April 27 Opening Performance: The National Jazz Museum in Harlem House Band led by Christopher McBride, 10:00
Welcome and Introduction, with Max Hollein, Heidi Holder, and Denise Murrell, 10:35
Keynote, by Isabel Wilkerson, 10:45
Session I Presentations: Harlem as Nexus, with Emilie Boone, Rhea L. Combs, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, and Richard J. Powell, 11:30
Session II Conversation: Legacies of Harlem on My Mind, with Bridget R. Cooks and Lowery Stokes Sims (virtually), moderated by Denise Murrell, 2:00
Conversation: Visioning the Future — The Collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with Kathryn E. Coney, Jamaal Sheats, Danille Taylor, and Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, moderated by Joy Bivins, 3:00
Session III Conversation: New Renaissance — Harlem Today, with Jordan Casteel, Anna Glass, and Sade Lythcott, moderated by Thelma Golden, 4:30
Sarah Sze will discuss her LaGuardia installation, Shorter Than the Day, at special talk on April 25 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:Sarah Sze,Teju Cole What:Public Art Fund Talk Where:The Great Hall at the Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh St. at Third Ave. When: Thursday, April 25, free with advance RSVP, 6:30 Why: In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death —,” Emily Dickinson writes, “We paused before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground – / The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – / Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity –.” Those words about the cycle of life inspired the title of Sarah Sze’s largest monumental installation to date, the site-specific Shorter Than the Day. A joint venture from the Public Art Fund and LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the piece was installed in 2020 as part of a major renovation of LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B, along with Jeppe Hein’s All Your Wishes, Sabine Hornig’s La Guardia Vistas, and Laura Owens’s I 🍕 NY.
Shorter Than the Day is a tenuous-looking sphere of aluminum and steel wiring holding hundreds of small photos of the New York City sky taken over the course of a single day, featuring shots of clouds, the sun, and the sky in white, blue, purple, yellow, orange, and red, evoking a constellation as well as the passage of time in a place where people tend to always be in a hurry, either to get home or to travel to another destination for work or pleasure. It dangles from the ceiling over an empty space above shops below. The Boston-born, New York City–based artist, whose “Timelapse” exhibit at the Guggenheim dazzled visitors last year with its fragile exploration of impermanence, will be at the Great Hall at the Cooper Union on April 25 at 6:30 to discuss Shorter Than the Day and more with Nigerian American writer and photographer Teju Cole, the award-winning Guggenheim Fellow and author of such books as Open City and Tremor. Admission is free with advance registration; the Public Art Fund talk will not be filmed, but an audio version will be available later.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
