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    More than 70 Iconic Works by Kerry James Marshall Shape a Major Survey in the U.K.

    “Untitled” (2009), acrylic on PVC panel, 155.3 x 185.1 centimeters. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley, B.A. 1979. © Kerry James Marshall. ‘Kerry James Marshall: The Histories’ is organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. All images courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, shared with permission

    More than 70 Iconic Works by Kerry James Marshall Shape a Major Survey in the U.K.

    July 31, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Drawing upon art historical sources, contemporary culture, and comics, Kerry James Marshall vibrant paintings boldly challenge the past. Through often monumental portraits of Black figures, the Chicago-based artist (previously) delves into themes of race, identity, legacy, and representation to bridge history and the present and imagine a better future.

    In the largest survey of the artist’s work ever presented outside of the U.S., the Royal Academy of Arts hosts Kerry James Marshall: The Histories. Organized in collaboration with Kunsthaus Zurich and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, the exhibition opens next month and features more than 70 works that span the artist’s career thus far. The show also includes a monumental oil painting commissioned for the Chicago Public Library titled “Knowledge and Wonder,” which is on loan for the first time.

    “School of Beauty, School of Culture” (2012), acrylic and glitter on unstretched canvas, 274.3 x 401.3 centimeters. Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Museum purchase with funds provided by Elizabeth (Bibby) Smith, the Collectors Circle for Contemporary Art, Jane Comer, the Sankofa Society, and general acquisition funds, 2012.57. Photo by Sean Pathasema. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

    The Histories is organized into 11 groups of works made between 1980 and the present, inviting viewers through a thematic and stylistic journey. The exhibition opens with “The Academy,” painted in 2012. A male model in a life drawing class stands in front of a patterned backdrop and looks directly at the viewer, giving the iconic raised fist of the Black Power movement.

    Marshall has long been guided by his early encounters with European art in museums and books, where he recognized a stark lack of Black figures. By the 1980s, he focused on the idea of visibility, creating the seminal piece “A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self,” which emphasizes his interest in confronting stereotypes.

    Typically working in series or cycles, Marshall often touches upon epochal social and political paradigms of the past, like slavery and the Middle Passage, Black Power and the Civil Rights movement, and the historical omission of people of color from Western painting traditions. His works often highlight daily African American experience and elevate everyday activities and interactions, like gathering at the barber shop, making a painting, relaxing at the park, or hanging out on the porch. Marshall posits that the past can be a tool with which to hew the future.

    Kerry James Marshall: The Histories opens on September 20 and continues through January 18 in London. Plan your visit on the RA’s website.

    “The Academy” (2012), acrylic on PVC, 182.9 x 154.9 centimeters. Collection of Dr. Daniel S. Berger, © Kerry James Marshall. Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

    “Knowledge and Wonder” (1995), oil on canvas, 294.6 x 698.5 centimeters. City of Chicago Public Art Program and the Chicago Public Library, Legler Regional Library, © Kerry James Marshall. Photo by Patrick L. Pyszka, City of Chicago

    “Vignette #13” (2008), acrylic on PVC panel, 182.9 x 152.4 centimeters. Susan Manilow Collection. © Kerry James Marshall. Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

    “Untitled (Policeman)” (2015), acrylic on PVC panel with plexiglass frame, 152.4 x 152.4 centimeters. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Mimi Haas in honor of Marie-Josée Kravis, 2016. © Kerry James Marshall. Photo courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

    “Untitled (Porch Deck)” (2014), acrylic on PVC panel, 180.3 x 149.9 centimeters. Kravis Collection, © Kerry James Marshall. Image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, London

    “De Style” (1993), acrylic and collage on canvas, 264.2 x 309.9 centimeters. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Ruth and Jacob Bloom. © Kerry James Marshall. Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

    “Untitled (Blanket Couple)” (2014), acrylic on PVC panel, in artist’s frame, 150.2 x 242.5 centimeters. Fredriksen Family Art Collection, © Kerry James Marshall. Image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, London

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    Five Latinx Artists Explore Materiality, Identity, and Belonging in ‘Los Encuentros’

    Facade mural by Ozzie Juarez. Photos by Alex Marks. All images courtesy of Ballroom Marfa, shared with permission

    Five Latinx Artists Explore Materiality, Identity, and Belonging in ‘Los Encuentros’

    July 23, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Marfa sits at the crossroads of US-90 and US-67 in the expansive Chihuahua Desert of far West Texas. About 60 miles from Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol trucks are a common sight along the roads, in addition to an unmissable, otherworldly tethered surveillance blimp that hovers near the highway between the town center and one of its most iconic installations, Elmgreen & Dragset’s “Prada Marfa.”

    As the current administration’s immigration policy has taken effect, the politics of identity and geography have again been thrust front and center—often violently. In this remote borderland, where the one-stoplight-town has been redefined by influential art world personalities for several decades in an idiosyncratic convergence of ideas and lifestyles, there is a unique opportunity to engage with themes of community, narrative, socio-economic realities, and a sense of place.

    Justin Favela

    Ballroom Marfa’s summer exhibition, Los Encuentros, gathers the work of Latinx artists Justin Favela, Ozzie Juarez, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga. The gallery describes an aim of the show, the title of which translates to “the meetings” or “the gatherings,” as “the representation of Latinx culture to confront the accessibility of art spaces, colonial art histories, the conditions of labor, and lived experience.”

    Amid daily news reports of ICE raids around the nation, the work in Los Encuentros is a timely and provocative exploration of today’s societal complexities along with being a way of “responding to the experiences of the people and places they engage with and depict,” a statement says.

    All the artists employ a wide range of materials and techniques, from Mayorga’s frosting-like, piped paint to Favela’s vibrant ruffled paper installations redolent of piñatas. Lechuga uses Mexican blankets, or cobijas, creating sewn textile collages that explore a wide range of experiences and perspectives amid the current political climate.

    Martinez continues to create intimate, candid portraits of farm workers by using produce boxes, bags, and repurposed plastic as his substrates as a reminder of the often invisible labor that goes into putting food on Americans’ tables. And Juarez has completely transformed Ballroom’s facade in to a giant painting derived from ancient Mesoamerican motifs.

    Narsiso Martinez

    Los Encuentros is curated by Texas-based Maggie Adler, who expressed delight at being able to collaborate “with artists whose practices center on allowing a broad range of community members to see themselves represented in art spaces.”

    The show continues through October 12. Find more on the gallery’s website. And during open hours, keep an eye out for Rachel Hayes’ colorful patchwork flag that flies out front.

    Ozzie Juarez

    Narsiso Martinez

    Justin Favela

    Antonio Lechuga

    Detail of a work by Antonio Lechuga

    Yvette Mayorga

    Detail of a work by Yvette Mayorga

    Antonio Lechuga

    Detail of a work by Antonio Lechuga

    Narsiso Martinez

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    Unity and Resilience Flow Through Taquen’s Gestural Compositions

    Unity and Resilience Flow Through Taquen’s Gestural Compositions

    July 10, 2025

    ArtSocial Issues

    Jackie Andres

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    In large-scale minimalist compositions, street artist Taquen covers the sides of houses, hospitals, and street barriers with reminders of strength and mutual understanding.

    Often depicting animals in motion, kinetic portraits, and expressive hands, Taquen’s expansive works exude momentum. The importance of movement reflects a central tenet of the artist’s practice, as he visits different parts of the world to work on murals.

    One of his recent excursions was made possible by The Jaunt, a residency program that creates opportunities for artists to travel to a new destination to spark inspiration and connection. In February, Taquen made the journey from his hometown of Madrid to Africa to participate in the Sahara Marathon.

    Established in 2001 to advocate for and demonstrate solidarity with the Sahrawi people, the international event takes place in close proximity to Tindouf, Algeria, a region that has been marked by the Western Sahara Conflict and humanitarian crisis for decades.

    In 1975, when Spain relinquished its colonial rule over the Western Sahara region, a power vacuum erupted between neighboring countries, leading to the Madrid Accords. This agreement heavily ignored the voices of Indigenous Sahrawi people who were forced into displacement, eventually settling into refugee camps that still reside in the Algerian desert approximately fifty years later.

    The long-standing conflict has faded in and out of headlines for decades, but the Sahara Marathon has continued to shine a light on the resilience of the Sahrawi people. “It was a project that allowed me to combine my greatest passions—art and sport—and also to contribute as much as possible to this unjust cause,” Taquen shares.

    The artist’s resulting silkscreen print demonstrates his experiences in Tindouf. Featuring two gestural hands with bold line work that subtly nods to henna, Taquen references young Sahrawi women, who play a vital role in the desert’s society. “During the marathon, for example, they were the ones who encouraged us the most,” the artist shares. “In the houses where we lived, they took care of us, their families, and so on. They are an example.”

    Arabic text lies below, alluding to a phrase that resonated with Taquen along the way. “The Sahrawi people living in the refugee camps call this place ‘the desert in the desert,’ which is meant both geographically and metaphorically. I knew I wanted to reference that in my artwork,” he says.

    Beyond the limited-edition print, Taquen also created a four-color risograph portrait combining line drawings and analog photography. And before leaving the refugee camps, the artist hosted two art workshops for children, sharing, “at the end of the day, these are boys and girls who do not speak my language, but through drawing we were able to express ourselves. It taught me a lot about their ideas and their hopes for the future.”

    The artist is currently in Sicily completing the Graniti Murales residency and has a busy year coming up including an art festival this summer and a solo exhibition in the fall. Keep up with his work on Instagram, and learn more on his website.

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    Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past

    Photos by Gerret Schultz. All images courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, shared with permission

    Roméo Mivekannin’s Cage-Like Sculptures of Museums Reframe the Colonial Past

    June 24, 2025

    ArtHistorySocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    Known for bold, chiaroscuro paintings that reimagine European art historical masterworks in his own likeness, Roméo Mivekannin is interested in the Western, colonial gaze on Africa and the power of archives to reveal underrepresented or untold stories. Born on the Ivory Coast, Mivekannin splits his time between Toulouse, France, and Cotonou, Benin. His practice interrogates visibility, appropriation, and power dynamics through direct and unflinching pieces spanning acrylic painting, installation, and sculpture.

    At Art Basel last weekend, in collaboration with Galerie Barbara Thumm and Cécile Fakhoury, Mivekannin presented a large-scale installation titled Atlas, comprising a series of metal buildings suspended from the ceiling. Modeled after institutional buildings—in this case, museums that house enthographic collections—the artist draws attention to the colonialist practices and ethical gray areas that permeate these spaces and their histories.

    Often founded upon controversial or dubiously-acquired personal collections of European urban elites, larger museums historically emphasized what was seen as “primitive” or “exotic,” exhibiting a skewed view of world cultures framed by a colonialist mindset. The British Museum, for example, was established in 1753 upon the death of Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of more than 80,000 “natural and artificial rarities” provided the institution’s foundation. His wealth—and his collection—was amassed in part through enslaved labor on his sugar plantations in Jamaica.

    Another well-known example of problematic collections include thousands of Benin Bronzes, housed in European institutions like the British Museum and others. British forces acquired many of these elaborately decorated plaques through pillage and looting in the late 19th century. Today, some museums have agreed to repatriate the bronzes to redress this historical indignity (the British Museum is still in discussions).

    As a student of both art and architecture, Mivekannin taps into the way certain structures and built environments are designed to convey prestige and dominance. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the National Superior School of Architecture of Montpellier (ENSAM).

    In Atlas, the structures take on the form of bird cages suspended from chains. Both elements symbolize captivity, likening ethnographic collections that often include human remains to what the Atlas exhibition statement describes as “human zoos.” In this context, the cages “serve as a reminder of the historical practices that sought to control and exploit ‘the Other.’”

    Mivekannin bridges past and present in this installation, inviting viewers to walk around the museums within a space that shifts the power dynamic. The work encourages viewers “to confront uncomfortable truths about colonial legacies and their ongoing impact on our contemporary society.”

    The artist scales down the museums’ palatial details to a diminutive size, displayed low, taking into consideration a kind of meta experience of the exhibition itself. In Mivekannin’s portrayal, the structures are both the cages and the caged.

    A show of the artist’s paintings, Black Mirror, is currently on view at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy, through July 27. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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    ‘The War of Art’ Charts the Catalyzing History of Artists’ Protests in the U.S.

    Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield—a Confrontation” (1982). Image courtesy of the Public Art Fund, New York. Photo by John McGrail. All images courtesy of Lauren O’Neill Butler, shared with permission

    ‘The War of Art’ Charts the Catalyzing History of Artists’ Protests in the U.S.

    June 17, 2025

    ArtBooksSocial Issues

    Grace Ebert

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    In May of 1982, Budapest-born artist Agnes Denes congregated with a small group of volunteers at Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park Landfill. They planted wheat berries onto the plot of land, which, once grown, created a lush field of wispy stalks juxtaposed against the city’s skyline. Visually striking, the ecological artwork was in part a protest against exploitation, greed, and the destruction of people and the environment. The paltry $158 spent on seeds stood in stark contrast to the $4.5 billion evaluation of the land itself.

    Denes’ “Wheatfield—a Confrontation” is one of ten case studies presented in Lauren O’Neill-Butler’s timely new book. Released on the heels of this weekend’s mass mobilization against the Trump administration, The War of Art: A History of Artists’ Protest in America comes at a moment when many of us are considering what tools we have to create the world we want to live in. Artists have long grappled with this question, O’Neill Butler reminds us, as many have even fused their aesthetic inclinations with their desires for justice.

    “Lie-in” protest of the Vietnam War in Central Park (November 14, 1969). Photo by J. Spencer Jones

    The War of Art is in the lineage of books like Nicolas Lampert’s A People’s Art History of the United States, which chronicles grassroots approaches to art and social change across 250 years. For her text, O’Neill-Butler shortens the timeline and begins with the 1960s. Early projects include Benny Andrews’ co-founding of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, or BECC, and the creation of a prison arts program at the Manhattan House of Detention following the Attica riot.

    O’Neill-Butler is wary of dictating exactly what activist art is, instead leaving the genre open-ended. The defining characteristics she does offer are that these types of projects are “always a means to an end” and tend to collapse the already frail boundary between politics and art. Many of her case studies utilize art to gain attention from the media and, therefore, the public, a combination that often proves more efficacious than either protest or artistic presentation alone.

    For example, David Wojnarowicz’s work to end the AIDS pandemic with ACT UP and Nan Goldin’s Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) were both movements that utilized spectacular tactics like the “die-in,” a public performance that originated during the Vietnam War. These actions involve protestors lying on the ground or floor, and in the case of Goldin’s work, took place in institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in objection to the Sackler family’s wing.

    Wojnarowicz is also famous for his now-iconic jean jacket saying, “If I die of AIDS—forget burial—just drop my body on the steps of the F.D.A.,” an image of which has widely circulated and come to symbolize the movement. These projects aren’t simply art created with activist concerns but rather inextricable from the positions they argue for.

    Still from Chris McKim’s documentary ‘Wojnarowicz’ (2020)

    Of course, it’s important to acknowledge that the problems these artists rail against—a lack of affordable housing, public health crises, discrimination in the art world, to name a few—are ongoing, and like most socially engaged projects, the examples the book includes are not without criticism.

    In 1993, seven African-American artists established Project Row Houses in Houston’s historic Third Ward by renovating a block of derelict shotgun houses and creating a welcoming gathering space in an underinvested neighborhood. Although Project Row Houses did revitalize the area through various artist-driven efforts like the Drive-By exhibition shown below, today, gentrification and the effects of the climate crisis continue to displace the residents whom organizers sought to serve.

    O’Neill-Butler doesn’t suggest that artists should be tasked with identifying and implementing solutions to the world’s ills and notes that Houston’s Third Ward would likely have gentrified even without artist intervention and subsequent attention. She does, however, offer a nuanced consideration of each project’s successes and struggles and acknowledges the limits of endeavors like those she outlines. Art provides what the book refers to as “a crack in the wall,” a rupture in the flimsy veneer of power and oppression that, once exposed, threatens their foundational structures.

    The War of Art is out today from Verso. Find your copy in the Colossal Shop.

    Benny Andrews giving a drawing demonstration to students at Alabama State University in Montgomery (October 10, 1975). Image courtesy of the Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation

    Installing “Home Free” by Israel McCloud for the ‘Drive-By’ exhibition at Project Row Houses (1994). Image courtesy of Project Row Houses

    Aerial view of Project Row Houses (2015). Photo by Peter Molick, courtesy of Project Row Houses

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    Punctured Photographs by Yael Martínez Illuminate the Daily Ruptures of Systemic Violence

    “El Hombre y la Montaña” (December 31, 2020). All images courtesy of This Book Is True, shared with permission

    Punctured Photographs by Yael Martínez Illuminate the Daily Ruptures of Systemic Violence

    June 13, 2025

    ArtBooksPhotographySocial Issues

    Grace Ebert

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    The Mexican state of Guerrero lies on the southern Pacific coast and is home to the popular tourist destination of Acapulco. It’s also one of the nation’s most violent areas due to drug trafficking and cartel presence, and is one of six states that account for nearly half of the country’s total homicides.

    For artist and photographer Yael Martínez, the reality of organized crime became more pronounced when, in 2013, three of his family members disappeared. He began to speak with others in his community who had experienced similar traumas and to connect threads across the borders of Mexico to Honduras, Brazil, and the United States.

    “Itzel at home,” Guerrero, Mexico

    Luciérnagas, which translates to fireflies, comes from Martínez’s meditation on this extreme brutality that “infiltrates daily life and transforms the spirit of a place,” a statement says. Now published in a volume by This Book Is True, the poetic series punctures dark, nighttime photographs with minuscule holes. When backlit, the images bear a dazzling constellation of light that distorts the images in which violence isn’t depicted but rather felt.

    In one work, for example, a man holding a firework stands in a poppy field, a perforated cloud of smoke enveloping his figure. He’s performing an annual ritual on the sacred hill of La Garza, and the setting exemplifies a poignant contradiction between ancestral cultures and a crop that has been subsumed by capitalism and is essential to cartel power. A statement elaborates:

    We don’t see death in Luciérnaga, but its omnipresence is felt throughout, lingering in the shadows of each photograph. Each image painfully underwritten by the result of a calculated violence that visited unseen and undetected, leaving behind the immense void of a vanished loved one. And yet there is always a sense of hope that informs the making of this work.

    Luciérnagas is available from This Book Is True. Find more from Martínez on Instagram.

    “Toro” (2018), Guerrero, Mexico

    “Abuelo-Estrella” (December 21, 2020), Cochoapa El Grande, Guerrero, Mexico

    “Levantada de Cruz” (2021)

    “El Río de la Memoria y Mis Hijas” (2022)

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    ‘Maintenance Artist’ Highlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Radical, Caring Approach to Public Art

    “Touch Sanitation Performance” (1979-80).
    Photo by Robin Holland, © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY, shared with permission

    ‘Maintenance Artist’ Highlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Radical, Caring Approach to Public Art

    June 5, 2025

    ArtFilmSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    We don’t typically associate city government and public works departments with conceptual artwork, let alone lasting collaborations. But for New York City artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who has been artist-in-residence at the city’s Department of Sanitation since 1977, her core creative inquiry centers around a radical shift in how we perceive art, who gets to experience it, and spotlighting the labor that happens “behind the scenes” to keep society running.

    The focus of a new documentary, Maintenance Artist, which premieres this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ukeles’ remarkable approach to art-making centers ideas of upkeep and nurturing. In 1969, she published “MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART, 1969!,” a proposal for an exhibition titled CARE, in which she outlined parallels between her experiences as an artist and mother with those of sanitation workers. She asks, “…after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”

    In the early 1970s, Ukeles performed a number of interventions drawing attention to labor and tasks that often go unnoticed in daily life, like “Washing / Tracks / Maintenance: Outside” (1973) and “Washing” (1974), the latter of which was staged outside of a former gallery in Soho. From 2 to 5 p.m. one June afternoon, she proclaimed that the area outside the front door was to be maintained as art, “normalized” again at 5:01 p.m. In a 1986 documentary short titled “Not Just Garbage,” she describes this early performance:

    I started to occupy the area through this sort of repetition of maintenance, of cleaning, and people watched me and were afraid to enter the space. When someone would enter, or go into the gallery and walk across, I would wipe out their tracks immediately. I would follow them on my hands and my knees and wipe out their tracks right up to their heels.

    In 1977, Ukeles was officially named the Department of Sanitation’s artist-in-residence, and her studio has occupied an office space within its building for decades. Maintenance Artist opens with historical footage of Ukeles introducing herself to sanitation workers as she began her more-than-four-decade tenure. The film then cuts to the artist and her studio manager, Catie J. Heitz, sifting through Ukeles’ archives to select work to send to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

    “Mierle is not a very typical artist,” Heitz says. “She works within systems, with people. Sometimes you can’t see the work because it was performance—it was an ephemeral thing—but what you can see now is the paperwork that represents it.”

    “Touch Sanitation Performance” (1980). Photo by Marcia Bricker, © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY

    Ukeles’ work aims to illuminate the labor—and laborers—who play an immanently crucial role in keeping the city functioning on a daily basis, even though work like trash collection or street-cleaning is rarely noticed or lauded. “I desire to create a new kind of utterly public art, not in sealed-off, special places for the few, but art injected right into the city’s bloodstream of daily working life,” she said in an early statement.

    Ukeles “has created art that deals with the endless maintenance and service work that ‘keeps the city alive’ — urban waste flows, recycling, ecology, urban sustainability, and our power to transform degraded land and water into healthy inhabitable public places,” Ronald Feldman Gallery says, which represents the artist. “Ukeles asks whether we can design modes of survival—for a thriving planet, not an entropic one—that don’t crush our personal and civic freedom and silence the individual’s voice.”

    The first piece Ukeles completed in her DSNY residency was a durational performance titled “Touch Sanitation Performance,” in which she shook the hand of every sanitation employee—all 8,500 of them—and said to each one, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.” That gratitude proved profound in some cases, as the interaction had lasting positive effects for some of the workers, who expressed how they had been harassed or humiliated while on the job in the past.

    “The Social Mirror” (1983), New York City 20 cubic yard Department of Sanitation garbage collection truck covered in glass mirror and acrylic mirror, created in collaboration with the New York City Department of Sanitation. Image © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York

    Several of Ukeles’ works transformed the fleet of New York City trucks and equipment into moving artworks. “The Social Mirror” (1983) covered a garbage truck in a giant reflective glass surface, mirroring denizens of the city back at themselves. “Snow Workers Ballet” (2012) coordinated hulking machinery into a choreographed performance, positioning hard graft in the limelight through the unlikely merging of industrial vehicles and elegance.

    The Queens Museum was the first to present a major survey of Ukeles’ work in 2017, spanning five decades of her interrogations of feminism, freedom, crisis, and care. Beyond the conceptual or performative, Ukeles’ practice has always been social and community-oriented, prompting us to genuinely consider how we treat one another, recognize hard work, and, of course, define what art can be.

    Maintenance Artist is directed, written, and produced by Toby Perl Freilich in collaboration with writer Anne Alvergue, premiering on June 8 with additional screenings through June 14 in New York. Learn more on the film’s website.

    “Washing / Tracks / Maintenance: Outside” (1973), performance at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT. Photo © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY

    Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “The Social Mirror” (1983), installed at the Queens Museum in 2016. Photo by Hai Zhang, courtesy of ‘Maintenance Artist’

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    Mario Moore’s Oil Paintings Bridge Past and Present to Spotlight Black Resilience and Style

    “Pillars” (2024), oil on linen, 84 x 96 inches. All images courtesy of Mario Moore and Library Street Collective, shared with permission

    Mario Moore’s Oil Paintings Bridge Past and Present to Spotlight Black Resilience and Style

    June 4, 2025

    ArtHistorySocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    In large-scale works in oil, Detroit-based artist Mario Moore taps into the legacy of European painting traditions to create bold portraits exploring the nature of veneration, self-determination, and the continuum of history.

    Moore’s work is currently on view in Beneath Our Feet at Library Street Collective alongside fellow Detroiter LaKela Brown. His new pieces nod to the Dutch and Flemish tradition of devotional painting, particularly religious garland paintings. Within elegant arrangements of flowers and foliage, he highlights Black figures relaxing or tending to gardens.

    “The Patron Saint of Urban Farming” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches

    In “Watermelon Man,” a stone altar is surrounded by hibiscus and watermelons, both symbols of resilience. Historically, the latter represented self-sufficiency and freedom for Southern African Americans following Emancipation, but whites flipped the narrative into a stereotypical exemplar of poverty. Moore reclaims the fruit in the spirit of refined 17th-century still-lifes.

    The artist has long drawn on the culture and legacies of both Detroit and the U.S. more broadly through the lens of the Black diaspora. Earlier works like “Pillars” position Black figures in elegant dress within the vast wildernesses of the American frontier, bridging the past to explore how racial divisions continue to shape the present.

    An exhibition last summer at Grand Rapids Art Museum titled Revolutionary Times took his series A New Republic as a starting point, revisiting the history of Black Union soldiers during the Civil War.

    Moore learned that one of his ancestors, who had been enslaved as a child, later enlisted in the Union Army, spurring the artist’s exploration of the seminal mid-19th-century period of conflict and Western colonization. He positions present-day figures in contemporary dress within historical contexts, interrogating political and racial segregations.

    “Watermelon Man” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

    Through tropes of European painting like a self-portrait of the artist in mirrored reflections and poses in three-quarter profile, Moore renders individuals whose direct, confident gazes and elegant dress invoke Detroit style and pride.

    For Beneath Our Feet, Brown and Moore collaborated on a five-foot-wide bas-relief bronze coin. Each artist completed one side, with Mario’s contribution taking the form of a portrait of Brown. “Her profile echoes the conventional format of traditional American coinage, confronting the historic absence of Black women in national symbolism and positions of authority,” the gallery says. On the opposite side, Brown depicts a bouquet of collard greens symbolic of nourishment and community.

    For this exhibition, Brown and Moore “reflect on the wealth held in the earth beneath us—and the enduring question of who holds the rights to till, own, and shape that land,” says an exhibition statement. Detroit is home to ambitious urban gardening initiatives that aim for local food sovereignty, mirroring the resourcefulness of Black farmers throughout history. The artists “consider land not just as property but as history, inheritance, and possibility,” the gallery says.

    Beneath Our Feet continues through July 30 in Detroit. See more on Moore’s website and Instagram.

    “International Detroit Playa: Sheefy” (2022), oil on linen, 108 x 96 inches

    “These Are Not Yams But They Are Damn Good” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

    “Creation of a Revolutionary (Helen Moore)” (2023), oil on linen, 76 x 52 inches

    “Black” (2023), oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches

    “Garland of Resilience” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

    “Birth of Cool” (2023), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches

    Installation view of ‘LaKela Brown and Mario Moore: Beneath Our Feet’ at Library Street Collective, Detroit

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