The multidisciplinary artist combines textiles and digital media to create new perspectives on Black femininity.

Have you read the latest issue of Art in America? Deftly assembled by guest editor Antwaun Sargent, “New Talent 2021” is bursting with writing by authors including Jasmine Sanders and Emmanuel Iduma and work by emerging artists Justin Allen, Miles Greenberg, and Tourmaline. I haven’t absorbed all of that rich content yet, but I have spent time talking with Qualeasha Wood, whose genre-bending tapestry Black Madonna-Whore Complex (2021) graces the cover.

Currently Detroit-based, Wood originally thought to pursue a military career, following the example set by her Air Force-veteran parents. That all changed after Wood enrolled in a high school art class on a whim. The experience clarified for her that art-making could be the physical and psychological space to explore Black femininity, and the joys and traumas inherent to that experience.

We met during a virtual portfolio review organized by Shanna Merola for Cranbrook Academy of Art MFA candidates in mid-2020. We reconnected to discuss image, symbolic language, and engaging the art world on her own, often controversial terms.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Qualeasha Wood

PostedMay 27, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

TagsQualeasha Wood, Roula Seikaly, Art in America cover, multidisciplinary artists, tufting, contemporary artists working with tapestry

© Krista Svalbonas, 2020 from the series What Remains — © Krista Svalbonas, 2020 from the series *What Remains*

Born in the United States to Baltic refugees, Krista Svalbonas’ complicated identity permeates her photography. Dual ties to Latvia and the United States, the languages she spoke growing up, and her relationship to architecture's psychological imprint on home and dislocation are the driving force behind her work.

Krista Svalbonas uses intricate techniques to reference architecture and design movements as they affect and reflect culture, struggle, and totalitarian rule. Her latest series, What Remains overlays laser-cut, traditional Baltic textile designs atop typological black and white photographs of buildings in Soviet-occupied Baltic cities. For Svalbonas, this fusion of cold structures with a nod to folk art and craft is a symbolic "counterpoint to Soviet-era architecture and the memory of its totalitarian agenda."

As conversations around cultural diaspora and displacement take center stage, Svalbonas' work is increasingly relevant and worth exploring. After having the pleasure of reviewing her work at Denver's Month of Photography Portfolio Reviews and including her in Humble's Diaspora Studies exhibition with The Curated Fridge, we caught up to discuss the many angles of her work.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Krista Svalbonas

PostedMay 20, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists

TagsKrista Svalbonas, photography and diaspora, laser cut photography, alt process photography, contemporary photography, new directions in photography

Virginia Wilcox's new book Arboreal, published by Deadbeat Club shows a sinewed relationship between Los Angeles trees and the sprawling landscape they inhabit.

Spidery branches look over and onto highways, pointing and wrapping like withered fingers. Their power is in the space around them, their conversation with the land, the occasional person sitting for a portrait, or the built human presence for which they continue to make space.

“These images present a survey of trees inhabiting a mangled urban landscape that looks something like wilderness,” writes Wilcox. The work does more than simply note urban development's impact on nature - it portrays a melancholic meditation on coexistence. A mirror leans against a palm tree reflecting bramble and sky behind it; a stand of baron trunks mimics a distant downtown skyline; a pathway stretches to reveal an anonymous figure on a park bench who almost disappears in their knotty camouflage.

As a collection of images, Arboreal is a quest for coexistence in an increasingly hostile world, and Wilcox’s soft, wistful way of seeing creates entry points from many angles.

I spoke with Wilcox to learn more about the book and her life within it.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Virginia Wilcox

PostedMay 12, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Photobooks, Publications

TagsVirginia Wilcox, Arboreal book, tree photography, Photo series about Los Angeles, 2021 photobooks, Deadbeat Club publisher, large format photography, contemporary black and white photography

© Kija Lucas. Objects to Remember You By: An Index of Sentiment, vitrine #7, Archival Pigment Print 32x74", 2014-2020

The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy, a roving photography exhibition Kija Lucas, showcases the emotional power of objects – those we cherish and those we carry that house memory and meaning.

When my wife and I prepared to move from San Francisco to Berkeley nearly three years ago, I paused to think about one of the items that sits on my desk: a small, painted wooden bird sculpture that fits comfortably in the palm of my hand. This orange, black, and turquoise token has been with me for 35 years. I vividly recall the face of the young woman who offered it as a parting gift at the end of her eighth-grade birthday party. Ann’s genuine smile suggested that I - a mouthy, atheist social outcast with unpopular opinions about Utah’s dominant religion - was welcome in a cool girl’s house.

Why do we hold onto objects that are emotionally potent, but carry no monetary value?

Whether the associated memories are happy or sad, why do we accept the material burden that the items pose?

These are two of the underlying questions that shape photographer Kija Lucas’s project The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy (MoST), Lucas’s crowd-sourced project visually coalesces sentimental objects brought in by participants. Looking at the large composite prints, it’s alluring to speculate about the objects and the strangers who possess them. Lucas resists that pull, thinking instead about wider contexts, particularly archiving as a remnant of settler-colonialism.

I spoke with Lucas about the project, which is on view at California Institute of Integral Studies through May 16th, its origin, and how it eludes familiar institutional archival practices and the resulting production of knowledge.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Kija Lucas

PostedMay 5, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists

TagsThe Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy, Roula Seikaly, Kija Lucas, New Photography, photography and the archive, conceptual photography, California Institute of Integral Studies

Artist and curator Zachary Francois speaks with photographers from “Something's Missing,” an exhibition and photobook curated to reframe the expectations of Black artists today.

When I first conceived “Something’s Missing,” my immediate response was that I needed to approach the exhibition as tastefully and respectfully as humanly possible. It wasn’t just a show of Black photographers’ lovely and intense work, it was also a moment to break the mold of what it means to be a Black artist today, and to have one’s work cared for by a curator who shares the same canon. We are often lumped together in our practices simply by our shared identity, our individuality removed. “Something’s Missing” became the vessel to replace the myth of universal cultural experience with something more nuanced.

I want people to critically engage with these artists without preconceived ideas of what a Black artist is and should look like. I see these ideas as a function of white supremacy and hold no power to constructively engage with Black artists. I hope galleries and institutions take note of how critical it is that curators of color lead, look over, and facilitate shows that come from shared cultural identities because it causes the artists to be heard and seen sincerely.

Zachary Francois in conversation with Juanese Davis, Benjamin Willis, and Kelli Mckinney
(editors’ note: the conversation was conducted after the exhibition at The Bakery Atlanta closed, but you can purchase a catalog by DM’ing Zachary Francois thru Instagram.

PostedApril 25, 2021

AuthorZachary Francois

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, interviews

TagsZachary Francois, Something's MIssing, Juanese Davis, Benjamin Willis, Kelli Mckinney, Black renaissance, contemporary Black artists, new photography, contemporary photography, emerging photographers, Soft Lightning Studio

Qualeasha Wood's Black Femme Tapestries

Laser-Cut Diaspora: In Conversation with Krista Svalbonas

The Scraggly Poetic Life of Los Angeles Trees

This Photography Project Ponders The Sentimental Power of Personal Objects

Challenging the Preconception of What it Means to Be a Black Artist