Weekly Happenings: June 9–15, 2021
Installation view of Tamara Shogaolu and Ado Ato Pictures’s Un(re)solved at The Netherlands Monument in Battery Park, NYC.
Each week, we create a list of exhibitions, screenings, events, and news featuring Creative Capital Awardees of all disciplines. This list can include shows that have recently opened, shows about to close, and noteworthy headlines and interviews that profile artists and their work.
This week is the last to check out Ben Thorp Brown’s Creative Capital Project, The Arcadia Center, at Kunsthal Gent in Belgium; Tamara Shogaolu launches Un(re)solved, a new installation and VR experience, in New York City and online; and Elissa Washuta talks to the Los Angeles Review of Books about her Creative Capital Project and new book, White Magic, using tarot cards as a guide.
Events, Exhibitions, & Screenings
Anne Patterson
Mother + Daughter
Jessica Hagen Gallery, Newport, RI
Exhibition
May 22–June 19, 2021
Anne Patterson is showing work alongside her mother, Anne Mimi Sammis, for the first time. The exhibition features Patterson’s ribbon and watercolor work and Sammis’s bronze sculptures.
Ben Thorp Brown
The Arcadia Center #1
Kunsthal Gent in Belgium
In-person installation
Through June 13, 2021
The Creative Capital Project The Arcadia Center, created by Ben Thorp Brown is a film, sculpture, furniture, sound installation, and training space for restoring empathy.
Eisa Davis
The Essentialisn’t: Gold Taste
Performance Space New York
In-Person Performance and Installation
Through June 27, 2021
Part of Afrofemononomy//Work The Roots—a group activation of black femme theater artists in celebration of each other—this performance and installation explores unproduced one-act plays by the late Kathleen Collins.
Michael Rakowitz
Nimrud
Wellin Art Museum at Hamilton College, NY
In-person exhibition
Through June 18, 2021
Using Middle Eastern food wrappers, Michael Rakowitz recreates ancient Assyrian carved stone reliefs which were looted by Western powers or destroyed during the Iraq War.
Tamara Shogaolu
Un(re)solved
The Netherlands Monument in Battery Park, NYC
In-person installation & online experience
June 10-19, 2021
Un(re)solved is an installation, podcast, film, and VR experience which uses augmented reality to explore the stories hidden in this living quilt by invoking the names of victims of civil rights era murders, often racist killings, out of the shadows of the past. The project was created by Tamara Shogaolu and her studio, Ado Ato Pictures in collaboration with Frontline.
Yance Ford
PRIDE, “Episode 5: The Culture Wars”
FX
TV Series
FX’s new docuseries, PRIDE, which chronicles the past 60 years of the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights in America. Episode 5, directed by Yance Ford, looks at how the culture wars in the 1990s galvanized LGBTQ+ people to create policies and organizations that still fight for equality today.
In the News
“A Writer’s One-Act Plays Debut, Continuing Her Resurrection”
New York Times
May 27, 2021
Creative Capital Awardee Eisa Davis and her group of Black femme theater artists, Afrofemononomy, perform plays be the late playwright and filmmaker, Kathleen Collins. “As avant-garde as Collins’s characters were in her time, they still remain singular today,” writes Salamishah Tillet for the New York Times, “giving us rare social insights into how we can navigate our unique moment of slowly returning to each other, to public spaces, and ultimately, live, in-person performances.”
“On making space for the impossible”
Creative Independent
June 2, 2021
Sabrina Orah Mark talks to Creative Independent about her writing practice: “I sit down often and I have no idea what I’m doing. Often I don’t really know what I think until I write through it. I’ve been holding on to writing more and more as a kind of life raft so that I can understand what is happening around me.”
“Fascinated by Synchronicities: A Conversation through Tarot with Elissa Washuta”
Los Angeles Review of Books
June 6, 2021
Elissa Washuta talks about her new book and Creative Capital Project White Magic through a tarot card reading.
“Legacy Russell Is Named Next Leader of the Kitchen”
New York Times
June 8, 2021
Legacy Russell will take the helm as executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen in September, succeeding Tim Griffin. She has been the associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem since 2018.
“Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grants 18 Projects”
Sundance Institute
June 9, 2021
Three Creative Capital Projects—Crystal Kayiza‘s The Gardeners, Débora Sousa Silva‘s Black Mothers, and Jasmin Mara López‘s Silent Beauty—received a Sundance Documentary Fund Grant. In total, $590,000 in unrestricted grant support was awarded to 18 projects in various stages including five in development, eight in production, and five in post-production.
“A brush with… Michael Rakowitz”
The Art Newspaper
June 9, 2021
Michael Rakowitz talks to the Art Newspaper in their podcast “A Bruch with…” about the influence of his mother’s Iraqi Jewish family on his practice, his earliest influences, and the question “what is art for?”
More News & Stories
We’re excited that the Whitney Biennial 2022, Quiet as It’s Kept (April 6 to September 5, 2022) will include Creative Capital Awardees: Alia Farid (2022), Terence Nance (2021), Sable Elyse…