Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Christine Miller, Rachel Elizabeth Jones, Samantha Hiura, and Nia-Amina Minor pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Black
Frederick Holmes and Company, Seattle, Washington
February 1 to March 3, 2024
In celebration of Black history month, this exhibition features work by Vincent Keele, Gary Logan, Kenneth Moore, James Wilson III and Filmon Adelehey. The pieces are captivating, touching on themes of cultural heritage, femininity, aquatic worlds, organic forms, activism, addiction and recovery.
In Calm In the Presence of Madness, James Wilson III’s bold figures of young Black boys command our attention and disrupt preconceived notions of childhood and masculinity. Vincent Keele’s figurative paintings show everyday Black life with a sense of vibrancy and vulnerability. The gallery also offers regular live jazz performances. Up next, NW D’lux, the musical project of acclaimed PNW drummer D’Vonne Lewis on March 9
Elevating Black Voices
Bellevue City Hall, Bellevue, Washington
February 1 to February 29, 2024
This exhibit of 17 PNW Black Artists is installed in the lobby of Bellevue City Hall. The City of Bellevue, MG2, and Onyx Fine Arts Collective worked with curator Jay Taylor to bring photography, fashion, portraiture, sculpture, assemblage and more to the first and second levels of the building. Viewers will see a range of contemporary work and even the 1991 painting Builders by Jacob Lawrence. While in Bellevue, make an additional stop at Bellevue Art Museum for Positive Fragmentation, which runs until March 10. This exhibition features works by contemporary women artists including Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker.
Reflection: How do you celebrate the vibrancy of Black people and Black culture?
Stranger Fruit
Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, Washington
January 11 to March 10, 2024
Jon Henry’s exhibition Stranger Fruit at the Photographic Center Northwest compels us to reflect on the profound ancestral, generational, collective, and individual grief too often held by Black mothers.
In Henry’s impactful portraits, Black mothers are shown both holding their sons and sitting alone turned away from the camera while reflecting on the daily realities of racial terror. The artist explains that none of these mothers have lost their sons, but still feel what poet Claudia Rankine describes as the “daily strain of knowing that as a Black person, you can be killed for simply being Black.” This strain is evident in how they cradle their sons of all sizes and ages, creating a contemporary Madonna della Pietà. There is a level of care and refusal that deserves our attention in these bold reflections of pain.
The title of this series is based on the lynching protest song Strange Fruit famously performed by Billie Holiday in the 1930s/’40s. Viewers can listen to Nina Simone’s 1965 rendition inside the exhibition space. Simone’s performance charges us to witness and hold the experience of loss, bereavement, and suffering. Her melodic refrain on piano at the end of the performance is as unsettling as it is a balm for the soul. Works like Stranger Fruit asks us to bear witness and interrogate what it means to care for the living and the dead.
Reflection: How do you hold space for grief? What does it mean to care for the living and the dead?
Group exhibition: Brandon Donahue-Shipp, DK, Christopher Iduma, and Marin Burnett
Wa Na Wari, Seattle, Washington
February 3 – April 20th, 2024
A new exhibition with work by Brandon Donahue-Shipp, DK, Christopher Iduma, and Marin Burnett is open now at Wa Na Wari—a 5th generation Black-owned home and cultural art center in Seattle’s historic Central District. In the curatorial statement, Wa Na Wari co-founder Elisheba Johnson asks visitors to consider dimension, inviting us to challenge our personal perceptions and practice existing in multitudes.
In the living room gallery, the assemblage collages of Brandon Donahue-Shipp’s Downtime layer multi-colored airbrushed landscapes with renderings of family photos transporting the viewer from the Central District to the artist’s own home. Inspired by Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance, these pieces depict comfort and care as real yet imaginative spaces where rest is a portal to healing and at the same time rest is a return home.
In the upstairs gallery, a brick is the focus of DK’s multimedia installation titled This isn’t getting laid. The artist invites us to contend with representations of a single brick again and again. In the artist’s words this type of visual repetition becomes “a meditation on disrupting the established ways we are taught to think about seeing” and this is amplified in the surrounding gallery rooms. Chris Iduma’s Selected Works include black and white photographs that pair two subjects side by side so we see the back of one person and the head of another. In many of the photographs, depth of focus forces viewers to look with deliberate attention and care. We can only see what is offered, be it a profile, a mask, sunglasses, or a rosary. In the final gallery room, Marin Burnett’s paintings seem as if they are jumping off the canvas as the artist pulls us into the intimate worlds of Black femmes and children. She’s Me is deeply moving and reaches out to touch the hand of the child in all of us but particularly Black people. Burnett’s work opens new dimensions and possibilities of healing as it asks, what if you and I are limitless?
Reflection: Meditate on disruption. What if you and I are limitless?