Upcoming

Ancestral Call

Danielle Scott

Curated by Anthony E. Boone and Bryant Small

Danielle Scott is a cultural explorer, activist and artist that breathes in the history and spirits of HER PEOPLE. Scott uses research to tell the unheard stories, transforming her into the storyteller, the mother, the daughter and the history of her subjects.    

This collection embodies the artist’s work and dedication to social commentary and ancestral storytelling. Manifesting the internal into the external, she creates a connection through color, texture and technique that weaves together the fables and stories of legend that are true. Poised to be stories of sadness, Scott finds the POWER and Resilience of these figures … these warriors … these Kings and Queens.   

In preparation for Ancestral Call, Scott spent more than a year visiting plantations and sourcing materials and historical documentation to be more connected to the stories that she’s been called to tell. She expertly integrates delicate papers and fabrics from around the world, as well as her personal photography and excerpts from her research documents in all of the works presented.  

In past work, Scott has addressed stereotypes and archetypes, systematic racism, and gun control. In her most recent collection, the BERTHher series (2019-2021), her focus was to share the stories of women through a joyful celebration of power and triumph.

This current presentation, darker in tone and emotion, represents the ancestry and lineage of black families across generations. This is Ancestral Call. 

Image: Untitled #1 (Free People of Color series) by Danielle Scott

Multitudinous

Curated by Emma Wilcox and Candace Nicholson

Participating Artists:

Katrina Bello
Ruth Borgenicht
Amy Faris
Bud McNichol
Lisette Morel
Michael K. Taylor
Mary Valverde
Heather Williams

Finding commonality when things are firmly controlled and anticipated is not hard. However, there is much to prefer instead in the pleasurable labor of making connections across our idiosyncrasies, our differences, and our approaches to art-making.

In Multitudinous, select alumni of Gallery Aferro’s two fellowship programs – the Sustainable Arts Fellowship and the Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity – will each present a profound representational artwork while answering the question: How do we first come to understand each other as a purposeful community of artists? 

By excerpting the ceaseless activity of 73 Market Street’s studios operating within the 16-year context of an artist-founded urban workspace, Multitudinous also celebrates a more recent development: the Sustainable Arts Foundation awarding Gallery Aferro prestigious multi-year funding in recognition of the excellence of our fellowship program for artist-parents, out of a national landscape of equally collaborative artist workspaces.

The residencies and fellowships here at Aferro do not tie artists to any specific mandate, but honor the labor for “the common wages of their most secret heart.” Several fellowship artists included in the exhibition will be making site-specific work, evidencing the important role of an artist-run space in supporting experimentation.

Multitudinous is also a joyous rejection of the alternative space as a mere “foyer” for commercial gatekeeping, to borrow Martha Rosler’s phrase. This is the pleasurable labor of seeing each other, in and out of moments of mainstream visibility, through processes, dialogues and realizations.

Image: Endless Forest by Bud McNichol

Poem Booth: Make Me Wanna Holler

Curated by Candace Nicholson

Participating Poets:

anduriña
Devynity
Raymond Bally
Chris Bisram
Benedicto Figueroa
Katelyn Halpern
Slangston Hughes
Kathy Kremins
Alexander Kusztyk
Eros Livieratos
Meg Lubey
Buttered Roll
Danny Shot

Poem Booth: Make Me Wanna Holler is the next creative incarnation of Gallery Aferro’s ongoing Poem Booth Project, an interactive installation that encourages language lovers to step inside a vintage 1960s-era wooden telephone booth to enjoy an immersive experience that only comes at the intersection of art and technology.

Showcasing 13 unique voices from local, national and international poetry scenes, Make Me Wanna Holler, brings together sculptors of the written word as they dissect, scrub and polish the concept of laughing through the pain. With humor, wit and anecdotal sarcasm, these talented bards will connect with you in ways that only sound and performance art can. 

Each poet shares their sometimes subtle, oftentimes striking words on healing, hiding or harnessing tragedy with the salve of comedy in this audio exhibition of written expression. Curated by writer and storyteller Candace Nicholson, the intention of Make Me Wanna Holler is to invite the listener to decide when the melancholy ends and the laughter begins.

Images, left then right: Phone off the hook by Juno Zago | Man full of emotion by Nsey Benajah