"THE JUNETEENTH JUBILEE CIPHER CRIT SALON"
JUNE 5-28, 2013

The IMC Lab + Gallery and SOL’SAX present The Juneteenth Jubilee Cipher Crit Salon. The Cipher Crit Salon is a series of public discussions of video and performance art. Artists will present their time-based work followed by a short talk where the artists will contextualize their work, then the audience will be invited to intellectually digest the work through a public discussion with the artist.


Cipher Crit Salon Schedule:

June 5, 6-8pm

Aisha Tandiwe Bell-Caldwell
Marina Gutierrez
Zachary Fabri


June 12, 6-8pm

Rebecca Goyette
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow
Elia Alba


June 19, 7-10pm

Juneteenth Jubilee
Artists and the public are invited to a masquerade celebrating the many ways that masks are used to create social change. Bring a mask or persona from your body of artwork or make one up on top of your head, chose to present your work in an open Cipher Crit Salon or just enjoy the dance party after the crits. Masks will be on sale for those who need them.


June 26, 6-8pm

Derrick Adams
Kanene Holder
Mary A. Valverde


June 28, 6-8pm

Christina Sukhgian Houle
Dino Blanche
Maria Fernanda Hubeaut

The Cipher Crit Salon was created because artists make work that is an attempt to invoke a conversation with the audience, but there is a paucity of venues outside of the academy for that conversation to take place. The agency within an artist's work is multiplied when the issues of the work are engaged, questioned, and validated though public discussion. The Cipher Crit Salon is intended to strengthen the dialog surrounding art and the creative process by disseminating the concerns of the artist through public discourse.

Please also enjoy the current exhibit at The Lab.

The IMC Lab + Gallery and SOL’SAX are pleased to present “Masqueraders Are the Ancestors of Protestors: A Celebration of the Mask As a Tool of Social Change”,opening on May 2, 6-8 PM. This will be the fourth Juneteenth Jubilee organized by SOL’SAX and his first collaboration with The IMC Lab + Gallery. The exhibition will remain on view through June 27.

SOL’SAX organizes Jubilees every year to celebrate Juneteenth, an American holiday commemorating the liberation of the last slaves in Texas on June 19th 1865. Each year the Jubilee focuses on a specific cultural product that has been used by culture soldiers to create social freedom.

In this show Saya Woolfalk, Firelei Báez, and SOL’SAX celebrate the tradition of honored reverence through masking. Masking is a cultural force around the world. The masking strategy celebrated in this exhibit stands in stark contrast to masking traditions that use mimicry and satire to ridicule the other by appropriating their identity. In many animist traditions, masks are more than a tool of anonymity to attack outsiders. They are visual aids to honor Ancestors. Most masquerade traditions of West and Central Africa are focused on defining and redefining their own identity rather than ridiculing or dismissing "the other".

This exhibition explores masquerade traditions that celebrate a deep reverence of self and acknowledges the self as an ancestral construction. Saya Woolfalk has mined ancestral masquerade traditions from around the world, fusing eclectic cultural references by using her personal aesthetic sense as glue. Her ongoing body of work featuring female characters called the “Empathetics” uses empathy as a tool to heal the pain of Colonial globalization, European supremacy and patriarchy. Firelei Báez directs her transformative aesthetic to riff on the Tignon headdress tradition of New Orleans. She celebrates this battle proven cultural soldier strategy of transforming insults into honor with this specific historical reference of cultural resistance. SOL’SAX uses masks that are hybrids of the traditional Dogon ancestral masks of West Africa and the contemporary protest sign to celebrate the protestors of the Civil Rights movement and the nonviolent cultural tools they used with roots in the masquerade traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa. There will also be a performance and video art series where artists Derrick Adams, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Zachary Fabri, Kambui Olujimi and many more will present work featuring masking or the appropriation of a persona. On Juneteenth (June 19th) there will be a Jubilee Masquerade where attendees will be encouraged to bring their own mask.

AT THE IMC LAB + GALLERY
56 W. 22ND ST., 6TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, NY 10010
www.TheIMClab.com

Get it on the Record Opens this Thursday

I am excited to be Participating in this Exhibition with a group of amazing artist. It opens This Thursday September 6th at Caldwell College in Caldwell New Jersey from 5-7pm

The Visceglia Gallery at Caldwell College
120 Bloomfield Avenue
Caldwell, NJ 07006

GO Open Studios This Weekend

Dear Friends,
I will be participating next weekend in the Brooklyn Museum's GO Open Studio Project: Saturday and Sunday, September 8th and 9th, 11am - 7pm.
The GO Open Studio Project is a community-curated open studio that will result in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Participants register online and then "check in" at the studios they visit, voting for their favorites along the way. Artists with the most visits and votes will receive a visit from the curators at the Brooklyn Museum who will then select a number of the artists for inclusion in a group show at the Brooklyn Museum. Over 1800 artists are participating in all the different neighborhoods of Brooklyn- it should be a fun weekend!
Here's a video that explains how the whole thing works: Link
Please feel free to register online as a participant- or just come on by my studio and check out what I've been working on!

I will Be performing the donated words while wearing the donated clothing this Sunday June 3rd at 4 pm At Marmy Laundromat 197 Malcolm X blvd and the corner of Putnam ave. Hope to see you then. This will be the final installment. If you have words or clothes to contribute I will be accepting any and all donations to the project. The Sculpture will be completed and installed in early August.

Aisha Tandiwe Bell

presents SUSU – a community-based arts project commissioned by The Laundromat Project. The fifth installment of Bell's project will take place this Sunday May 20th and June 3rd from 2-6 pm.

Sunday May 20th, 2012, 12-6pm – Wash, Dye and Dry; Clothing Lines Part 3

On this day, all of the donated clothing will be bleached and dyed in front of Marmy Laundromat. I will continue to collect words and clothing. So if you have not had a chance to contribute to the sculpture and sound peace please stop by and bring ONE article of clothing to Marmy Laundromat 197 Malcolm X Blvd on the corner of Putnam Ave. The clothes do not have to be in good condition. They will become a part of a large-scale sculpture. Along with the clothing we will ask for a few words that relate to you, your donation and or your experience as a member of the community of Bedstuy.


Sunday June 3rd, 4pm – Shedding

Bell will present a performance that combines movement and the words written by participating members of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community.
Extra Clothing will be donated

As an extension of its Create Change Public Artist Residency, The Laundromat Project announces a new commissioning program that allows the organization to work with artists to produce a site-specific public art project at their local laundromat. The commissioning arm builds on the goals of the Create Change program, which was developed to connect artists of color and their communities in meaningful ways by resourcing them to place art-making in the context of everyday living.

Aisha Tandiwe Bell presents SUSU – a community-based arts project commissioned by The Laundromat Project. The second installment of Bell's project will take place this Sunday April 22th from 2 to 6 pm.



In the Akan language of West Africa, “susu” means small-small. It refers to the build-up of small contributions that create something larger from which everyone benefits. Through a series of performances that will take place in front of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Marmy Laundromat, Brooklyn-based artist Aisha Tandiwe Bell will create SUSU – a fabric sculpture made from articles of clothing donated by her neighbors.



MARK YOUR CALENDARS



Sunday April 22, 2012, 2-6pm – A Gathering of Old Clothes - Part 2


In case you weren’t able to make it on the 15th, drop-off your clothes to be included in Bell's large-scale sculpture.

Please bring one article of clothing to Marmy Laundromat 197 Malcolm X Blvd on the corner of Putnam Ave. The clothes do not have to be in good condition. They will become a part of a large-scale sculpture. Along with the clothing we will ask for a few words that relate to you, your donation and or your experience as a member of the community of Bedstuy.



Sunday April 28, 2012, 12-6pm – Wash, Dye and Dry; Clothing Lines

On this day, all of the donated clothing will be bleached and dyed in front of Marmy Laundromat.



Sunday May 6, 2012, 4pm – Shedding

Bell will present a performance that combines movement and the words written by participating members of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community.


As an extension of its Create Change Public Artist Residency, The Laundromat Project announces a new commissioning program that allows the organization to work with artists to produce a site-specific public art project at their local laundromat. The commissioning arm builds on the goals of the Create Change program, which was developed to connect artists of color and their communities in meaningful ways by resourcing them to place art-making in the context of everyday living.