Lowery Stokes Sims – författare

Fifty years of DeVane's energetic, interactive sculptures, paintings and works on paperMaryland-based artist Oletha DeVane (born 1952) has long been a prominent presence in the Baltimore-area art scene, working in all media, including public sculpture. Spectrum of Light and Spirit documents the first full retrospective of her work, from early paintings to video artworks and interactive sculpture.Among the works presented here is a large-scale carved sculpture, N’Kisi Woman—Universal N’Kisi (2021–22); nkisi is a Kongo cultural figure invested with sacred energy. The work reflects DeVane’s fascination with how materials convey meaning and reemerge as myths and memories.“Oletha DeVane is a wayfinder and a storyteller,” says the retrospective’s curator, Lowery Stokes Sims. “Over the last five decades as she has traveled in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, she has been inspired by the stories and characters she encounters, bringing the unexpected to light, while finding new nuances in the old and familiar, and unexpected correlations among those varied cultures.”

Selections from the extraordinary Studio Museum in Harlem Collection, accompanying the highly anticipated opening of the institution’s first-ever purpose-built museum Meaning Matter Memory is a keepsake extension of the Studio Museum’s collection of artwork by artists of African descent. Beautiful illustrations of significant works by more than 250 artists are accompanied by original texts from more than 100 voices in the art world, including writers, scholars, artists, and critics.Celebrating myriad voices and artistic media, styles, and eras, this handbook glimpses into the profound and manifold artistic achievements made by Black artists for over 200 years. The book exhibits and carries forward a principal tenet of the Studio Museum’s mission: to serve as the stewards of the work – old, new, and still to be created – by artists of African descent.Featuring work by: Derrick Adams, Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Jordan Casteel, Elizabeth Catlett, Nick Cave, Samuel Fosso, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Gordon Parks, Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Augusta Savage, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many more.

This is the first volume to document and contextualize Sonya Clark’s large-scale, collaborative artworks. These projects demonstrate Clark’s career-long commitment to addressing the urgent issue of racial inequality in American society and her philosophy of creatively engaging the viewer in reflection on the nation’s history of slavery and our roles in dismantling systemic racism today.As an extension of her abiding commitment to issues of history, race, and reconciliation in her work, Clark is also distinctive as an artist for her use of textiles and other everyday materials, which she aligns with the intertwined histories of art and craft. For marginalized people (African Americans and women, in particular) handwork has been essential to survival and consequently has functioned, and continues to function, as an important means of creating a group identity. Hence, for Clark, craft is essential to the question of equality.