Film & Video (Film & Video)

The title of Alicia Smith’s video work, Teomama , means “God Carrier” in the Aztec language of Nahuatl. It was the name given to medicine men and women who carried the bones of Huitzilopochtli—the god of war, sun, and human sacrifice in ancient Mexico, and the national deity of the Aztecs. Of the many legends featuring Huitzilopochtli, the origin story of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) is perhaps one of the most well-known.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (the way in is the way out) is representative of McCarthy’s work. Upon first encounter, her abstract colorful compositions resemble somewhat formal nonrepresentational landscapes. However, a closer inspection reveals the presence of a lowbrow style that draws inspiration both from outsider and folk art traditions.

Installation (Installation)

Failed Handshake #1

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost) are representative of McCarthy’s work. Upon first encounter, her abstract colorful compositions resemble somewhat formal nonrepresentational landscapes. However, a closer inspection reveals the presence of a lowbrow style that draws inspiration both from outsider and folk art traditions.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage. Iron is one of nature’s most abundant metals. Smith, a philosopher of human detritus and poetic associations, presents it in this work as simultaneously everywhere yet paradoxically forgotten, lost in the heaps of refuse that fill junkyards and vacant lots.

Textile (Textile)

Out of simple materials, Alicia Henry creates enigmatic, somewhat troubled characters, which reveal her interest in the complexities and the contradictions surrounding familial relationships. The artist probes societal differences and how these variations affect individual and group responses to themes of beauty, the body, and broader issues of identity. Untitled explores these themes and addresses the processes through which women navigate such issues.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Set to the iconic and spiritual music of Alice Coltrane’s Turiyasangitananda (1937–2007), Cauleen Smith’s film Sojourner travels across the US to visit a series of sites important to an alternative and creative narrative of black history. While the approach may appear spiritual, it is more futuristic (Afrofuturism and Radical Jazz) than religious. Smith is interested in using the individual stories of “those who have formed their own solutions” as a reconstructive and healing lens for considering the past.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

In 8 Ball Surfboard (1995),Alexis Smith combines her long-term interests in California culture and conceptual assemblage. The surfboard, an emblem of Southern California, emblazoned with the image of an eight-ball, references numerous tropes and clichés of American popular culture, specifically subcultures related to pool halls, surfing, and beaches. Indeed, this model-scale surfboard may be a future pop-culture relic, referencing a particular surfer or era of board design.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Sable Elyse Smith’s Pivot III resembles playground equipment uselessly reconfigured. The stainless-steel asterisks, assembled from prison visitation-room seating, are painted 2K black and blue: colors evoking the US criminal justice system, its racist enforcement, and the heavy-duty finish of finance capitalism with which the culture industry is enmeshed. The work consists of six long rods, affixed via plate to each of the faces of a central cube, from which they radiate in perfect symmetry.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Kosmic Music is a musical score comprised of two parts: a single mixed media drawing titled Colors and Satellites, and a pair of mixed media drawings titled Koral Reef . Conceived of together as a single musical score, the three drawings exemplify a specific stage in the evolution of Wadada Leo Smith’s Ankhrasmation Language, which he has been developing since 1967. Although at first glance the works in Kosmic Music might appear abstract compositions drawn on paper, as with other scores produced by Smith, suggestions of musical structures are revealed upon closer inspection: an entanglement of musical sheets and bright geometric forms.