Election/Erection: Adejoke Tugbiyele

October 10 – December 13, 2014

Opening Reception October 10, 2014, 7-10 PM

Curated by Dexter Wimberly

Gallery Aferro, Main Gallery

In this exhibition Tugbiyele examines the relationship between institutional power/control and sexuality within the context of Nigeria – and in general Africa and the Diaspora.  Harking back to Foucault’s theories on the history of sexuality, she also weaves together indigenous African beliefs surrounding the body and the institution of marriage.  While confronting personal challenges as a queer woman of Nigerian heritage, she also seeks to illuminate the hardships endured by others as a result of familial pressure, religious damnation, the injustice of federal criminalization and other forms of discrimination.

Part of this exhibition thus investigates the complex role that religion continues to play in Nigeria as a powerful force governing the social fabric of many societies and how technology is used as a tool for either escape or empowerment.  Materially, she repurposes popular commodities as mediums in her work including traditional African brooms, perforated metal, thread, and wire – transforming them into small and large figurative works. As a whole Election/Erection is a presentation of sculpture, drawing, video, and mixed media works which speak collectively to violence, exile, love, and fantasy.

Adejoke Tugbiyele is a Nigerian-American sculptor and experimental video artist. She works in various mediums including wire, natural fibers, fabric, and wood. The themes in her work range from sexual identity and human rights to leadership and governance. Tugbiyele’s work has been exhibited and screened at reputable institutions both in the United States and internationally including the The Center for Contemporary Art in Lagos Nigeria, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Jewish Museum of New York, The Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw Poland, The Museum of Biblical Art, The James E. Lewis Museum of Art, The Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Spelman College Museum of Art and The United Nations Headquarters. She has also shown at Art Dubai 2014, the 6th Annual Joburg Art Fair in 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa and the 2014 video art fair, LOOP Barcelona, Spain and the Goethe Institute in Lagos, Nigeria. After studying and practicing as an architect, Tugbiyele went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art (2013). She is the recipient of several awards including the Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship 2013-14, The Amalie Rothschild Award (2013) and the William M. Phillips Award for best figurative sculpture (2012) at Maryland Institute College of Art.  She has appeared/published as an artist and queer activist on CNN international, The Feminist Wire and the Huffington Post.  Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Metropolis M magazine in the Netherlands and Omenka Magazine in Lagos, Nigeria.

Tugbiyele is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Gallery Aferro. In addition to art-making, she is the Director of Studio Arts Programs at The Lower East Side Girls Club of New York where she helps mentor and empower young women through the arts.

Present Tense: Arts of Contemporary Africa

A Public Conversation with Guest Artist, Adejoke Tugbiyele

Moderated by Christa Clark, Senior Curator of the Global Arts of Africa

Newark Museum, Billy Johnson Auditorium

Sunday, November 9, 2-3 pm

Program co-presented by the Newark Museum and Gallery Aferro

Performance and reception to follow at Gallery Aferro, 3:30-6 pm

Tours of the exhibition Election/Erection: A solo exhibition of recent works by Adejoke Tugbiyele will be presented by Guest Curator Dexter Wimberly at Gallery Aferro

Featuring works from the Museum’s permanent collection of contemporary African art, this gallery is the first such dedicated exhibition space in the country. The installation focuses on the art of the present day, including works by nine artists with wide-ranging approaches to “art-making” as well as equally varied subject matter and sources of inspiration.

Together, they provide a window into the ongoing artistic creativity of this dynamic continent, complementing the adjacent thematic installation of African art while encouraging connections with other examples of contemporary art featured in the museum’s American art, Asian art and Decorative Arts galleries. Coinciding with the exhibition at Gallery Aferro, the Newark Museum will highlight examples of politically engaged works in the museum’s galleries devoted to the arts of global Africa. Highlights include a 1980s anti-apartheid work by South African artist Sue Williamson, a photograph by Zanele Muholi from her series of portraits of the LGBT community in South Africa, and a printed textile dress made to protest female circumcision in Mali. Also featured will be AFRIKEA, an earlier work by Ade Tugbiyele whose art is the focus of the Gallery Aferro exhibition. Visit newarkmuseum.org for details

AfroOdyssey IV: 100 Years Later

Performance by Olushola A. Cole

Sunday November 9th, 3:30pm

A daughter of Nigerian and Caribbean parents, Olushola A. Cole was born in the United Kingdom. Cole’s work is infused with multidisciplinary materials and methods, bridging the world of theater, place making and visual art. Her body of work Jenny.Was.A.Pirate.Hater uses sculpture, photography, sound, video, drawing, performance and installation. These mediums, along with the emergence of her alter ego Pirate Jenny, explore motifs of identity while serving to create an expressive, interdisciplinary and socio-political look at the Golden Age of Pirates intersection with the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Projects and current collaborations include co-producing and performing in the experimental film project AfroOdyssey III, screened at the Jewish Museum of New York’s  Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video Series (2013) ; AfroOdyssey IV : 100 years later at the Goethe Institut’s Black to the Future exhibition and  LOOP ’14 international film festival in Barcelona  (2014).  Classical training in piano, trombone, movement and voice has laid strong foundations for performances withCarnegie Hall’s McFerrin Instant Opera Concert (2008) Jacobs Pillow’s Hip Hop Cultural Traditions Dance Program (2009) and with the off-Broadway hit STOMP.Embodied inquiry into physical theater, yoga, Gaga, Alexander Technique, contact improvisation, ballet and modern dance underwrite Cole’s belief in a community’s ability to positively change their environment through movement. Studies of social rebellion and forays into social movements such as house dance, samba, West African dance, hip-hop, tango and capoeira – have propelled Cole to always seek the various connection between the creative code of oppressed groups and their oppressive environments. Cole graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of General Studies, minoring in Women’s Studies. She performs with the Elm City Dance Collective and also facilitates her  Body Vocality Improv Workshops . Cole is a proud collective member/owner of the anarchist project Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffeehouse. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at  Mount Royal School of Art  at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

No More Place:

A group show about the degradation / disassociation of personal, domestic and cultural geographies.

October 10 – October 19, 2014

Opening Reception October 10, 2014, 6-10 PM

93 Market Street

Featuring work by: Anna Ablogina, Hannes Bend, Patricia Dominguez, Glenn, Fischer, Shanti Grumbine, Nicholas Hamilton, Samantha Holmes, Maria Hupfield, Tatiana Istomina, Tasha Lewis, Eleen Lin, Sharon S. Ma, Julie Nymann, Mitch Paster, Gamaliel Rodriguez, Sarah Rowe, Catherine Telfod-Keogh, David Gregory Wallace, Didier William, Brian Zegeer

No More Place includes video installations, sculpture, photography, drawings, paintings, paper cuts, ceramic sculptures and paper collage by various artists from the New York area who met through the Bronx Museums’s Artist-in-the-Marketplace program in spring 2014. Our work interrogates the break-down of spaces, structures or hierarchies in our modern world.

We are questioning what it means to be placed, to have place, to be ranked, to have a certain identity, to be stable, to have a viewpoint, a location, an orientation. We use various media to respond to new technologies, personal and cultural narratives and environmental shifts. No More Space evokes an unmapped identity, displacement and over-crowding but we are also interested in objects/identities that exist in a realm beyond space— in light, ink, mathematics, or new cultural frontiers.

Image: Mitch Paster

EmergeNEXT: Windows on Market

October 10 – January 1, 2014

Opening Reception October 10, 2014, 7-10 PM

Curated by Jaishri Abichandani and Kalia Brooks

77 Market Street

On October 10, 2014, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art and Gallery Aferro will proudly present EmergeNEXT: Windows on Market Street. The project features two new installations by artists Mary A. Valverde and Jayson Keeling, curated by Jaishri Abichandani and Kalia Brooks. An opening reception celebrating the public art initiative will be held at 77 Market Street from 7 to 10pm.

“EmergeNEXT: Windows on Market” is a collaborative series developed with Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art and Gallery Aferro. Previous Fellows from Aljira’s Emerge program are chosen by a guest curator to develop new work that activates the unique private /public storefront window spaces on Market Street. Each artist is encouraged to explore the idea of INSIDE OUT | OUTSIDE IN or propose something altogether new.

“Protect Me From All the Measures They Take In Order to Protect Me” is an installation by Jayson Keeling curated by Kalia Brooks to envision and facilitate an installation for Windows on Market. Keeling’s installation turns the window front into a camera obscura designed to project the activity on the street at the intersection of Market and Washington Streets. Keeling is employing one of the oldest forms of optical technology with a contemporary form of image making to provide the pedestrians along Market Street a new perspective of their everyday space.

“Triumph (not televised)” is an installation by Mary A. Valverde curated by Jaishri Abichandani. Valverde creates installations reminiscent of sacred spaces and material offerings. The works propose relationships between the forms, marks and measurements that intend to diagram the visceral. In our attempt to learn, we revisit, retrace and repeat lessons until they become intrinsic gestures; our lives are a constant replaying of these lessons. We surround ourselves with materials that remind us of them, materials often charged with the residue of our intentions and the remnants of our actions. Valverde’s work is driven by creative research. It is the chronicling, indexing and archiving of patterns to examine the ways in which they empower space, the body and the psyche. She is interested in the systemic arrangements of objects, sounds and textures as manifested through the experience of music, materials and memories both within the individual and society.

EmergeNEXT is an initiative to continue engaging with Emerge fellows by offering advanced professional development opportunities, continued career guidance and solo project space to Emerge fellows further along in their careers. The EmergeNEXT exhibition opportunity is conceptualized as a project room without a formal curatorial role and serves to recognize and showcase the progress and development of Emerge Fellows as artists.

Gallery Aferro’s “Activate: Market Street,” is a new, year-round public art project transforming hundreds of linear feet of vacant storefront windows in Newark’s historic downtown district. Storefronts owned by RBH Group on Market Street between Washington and University Streets are activated with installations, films, animation, neon sculptures, kinetic and interactive art, and performative public programming from local, national and international artists. Supported by RBH Group, and created by Gallery Aferro, the project delivers arresting, unexpected, and highly memorable experiences with contemporary art directly to the public, whether residents, students, workers or first-time visitors.

Most Likely To…

Bud McNichol

April 24 – May 24, 2014

Opening Reception April 26, 7-10 PM

Project Room

Does our present condition/incarnation live up to what we had envisioned for ourselves? Have the latent qualities within us begun to manifest or is there room for further growth? These questions are raised in Bud’s current series of large-scale paintings. McNichol paints the subject larger than life using class photos from their youth to reinforce a sense of wonder. Imagery from childhood, particularly, the rendering of eyes from popular children’s cartoon characters further convey a wide-eyed optimism. Ultimately, feelings of nostalgia are also explored as the inevitability of aging takes exaction on each passing generation.

Bud McNichol studied at the University of Scranton before receiving his A.A.S. in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design. He’s been a practicing artist for the past 15 years, focusing primarily on painting. He is a past recipient of two Geraldine R. Dodge grants and has been an artist in residence at Cooper Union, Vermont Studio, the School of Visual Arts as well as completing a residence at Gallery Aferro in 2013. Bud McNichol’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New York, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia and Chicago. These exhibitions include the Lab Gallery, Montclair Art Museum, City Without Walls, Brooklyn Collective, Vox Populi, 2nd Floor Gallery, Artist’s Space and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. His paintings were also included in Studio Visit Magazine in 2012.

Brick City Project

Malik Hardaway-Whitaker

April 24 – May 24, 2014

Opening Reception April 26, 7-10 PM

Liminal Space

Brick City Project is a series of found bricks painted with positive scenes of Newark as a way to educate the public on the positive events happening in the city that are often overshadowed by negative press. This is Hardaway-Whitaker’s rebellion against what the world and media has to say about his home town. Through Hardaway-Whitaker’s art, his passion is to show the world that Newark is more than a poverty stricken town filled with gang violence and drug addiction. Hardaway-Whitaker depicts Newark’s thriving culture, prosperous growth, and potential. These bricks show a different often unseen side of Newark. They show the Newark resident’s passion and commitment to overcome challenges that plague their city and continue to make it a successful and welcoming place to live, thrive, and work.

Malik Hardaway-Whitaker studied at Rutgers University and the Art Institute of America, along with several artist programs and workshops. He has been a mentee under some of the most influential artist of our time include New York sculptor Carole Feurman and Brazilian artist Duda Penteado. From his studies he has translated his style and technique into a complete disciplinary form. This form he has used to mentor inner city students who are interested in art on how to better their own art skills and then to apply these disciplines to their daily lives. His illustrations have appeared in many poetry books and publications. He is also an accomplished muralist and currently seeking to involve himself in more public art.

Material Memory: Heather Hart, Nick Pilato, Sophy Naess

Curated by Barbara Madsen

February 22 – May 24, 2014

Opening Reception February 22, 7-10 PM

Main Gallery

Material Memory is an exhibition bringing together three heterogeneous artists whose work engages observers to create their own narratives whether they are rooted in quotidian encounters, material process, or triggered latent memories. One may look to material culture studies to frame the associations that cultures have with objects, structures and landscapes through collective experience and memory. The exhibition considers the artist’s choices when deciding which physical intransient substances to use, directly or indirectly manipulating perception based upon the audience’s experience with the material. It raises questions about mortality and the invaluable commodity of time, ever present and yet fleeting, concrete and yet intangible. It examines the artist’s daily observations, transmuting meaningful or mundane fodder into content. What roles do everyday objects play in our lives? How are inherent memories born from these objects? How do material objects, and structures generate communal memory? What triggers the decisions we make? Is it a simple fragment from the street? Shard? House? How are these impulses implemented?

Masquerade

James Horner

February 22 – March 29, 2014

Opening Reception February 22, 7-10 PM

Project Room

Masquerade explores the mundane faces people put on to deal with the everyday – happy, sad, hiding, and tough. To handle life and get from a to b, we sometimes have to mask our true selves to cope with reality. James Horner is a painter who lives in New York City. His colorful expressionistic paintings explore the psychological effects of the environment on individuals. Figures are abstracted and overwhelmed by their surroundings. Shape interact with figures in space as lines connect atmospheres in different directions, creating islands with systems of thought. Horner communicates his viewpoint thorough a unique style of painting, which samples from traditional and contemporary abstract/expressionist and surrealist art. The foreground and background are pushed and pulled with a battle that erupts between bright colors and muddied hues that develop a kaleidoscope for the eye to move around the surface.

Miroloyia

Alexandra Desipris

February 22 – March 29, 2014

Opening Reception February 22, 7-10 PM

Liminal Space

MIROLOYIA (“fate words”) uses the form of rural Greek funeral rituals: lamentation, burial, and exhumation – as a means to explore moments of finality, memory, and the subject of death. The imagery presented in the poetic language of the MIROLOYIA is transferred into a visual language evoking the same sense of resignation, sadness, and eventual joy in the brighter moments of life. A sparse palette, minimal forms, and symbolic use of specific materials (steel, lead, stone) will draw the attendee into this ritual and include them in the artist’s acts of mourning and desire for transcendence. MIROLOYIA is ultimately a celebration of hope. Alexandra Desipris is a Greek-American artist based in Newark, NJ whose work focuses on deconstructing and examining ritual, religion, and ethnicity through the lens of her own cultural experience through painting, sculpture and writing.

 Margaret Murphy

Four from Aferro

January 9 – February 15, 2014

Opening Reception January 9, 7 PM

Artist Talk January 30, 7 PM

Pierro Gallery

5 Mead St South Orange, NJ

The Pierro Gallery is pleased to host four alumni of the Gallery Aferro Studio Residency program.  The artists will present installation-based exhibitions that were originally premiered at Gallery Aferro during 2013. Each artist’s project reflects the rigorous and often experimental studio work undertaken during their six month residency. The installations, under the heading Four from Aferro are as follows: Skinning The Image, Katrina Bello; The Edge of Pause, Marcy Chevali; Sowing Promise, Vikki Michalios; and Toile News Project, Margaret Murphy.

Some Strange Truth

Anne Q. McKeown

Curated by Evonne M. Davis

January 11 – March 8, 2014

Opening Reception January 11, 1-4 PM

Printmaking Center of New Jersey

440 River Road Branchburg, NJ

The Printmaking Center of New Jersey and Gallery Aferro are excited to announce Some Strange Truth, a solo retrospective of works by our current studio resident Anne Q. McKeown. Gallery Aferro has produced a full color catalog on the occasion of the exhibition, to be available at both organizations starting January 11. Of the decade of work she and curator Evonne M. Davis drew upon to create the show, McKeown writes “In my work I contrast rational and conceptual processes with intuitive inquiry. I research,investigate, and shape materials using chance, accident, and random samplings. In addition, I draw imagery from the canon of art history. I am driven to create work that is richly layered, that feels expressive, measured, and substantial.”