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

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    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.

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      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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    • 150 Shares162 Views

      in Art

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

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      “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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      in Art

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

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      “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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    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in Art

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

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      “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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    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library

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      All images courtesy of Amarie Gipson, shared with permission

      Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library

      May 27, 2025

      ArtBooksConversationsHistoryPhotographySocial Issues

      Grace Ebert

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      One of Amarie Gipson’s many gifts is an unyielding desire to ask questions. Having worked at institutions like The Contemporary Austin, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Gipson has cultivated a practice of examining structures and pushing beyond their limitations. Her inquiries are incisive and rooted in a profound respect for people of all backgrounds, with a central goal of expanding art’s potential beyond museum walls.

      A true polymath, Gipson is a writer, curator, DJ, and founder of The Reading Room, an independent reference library with more than 700 books devoted to Black art, culture, politics, and history. Titles like the century-spanning African Artists sit alongside Toni Morrison’s novel Sula and Angela Davis’ provocative Freedom is a Constant Struggle, which connects oppression and state violence around the world. The simultaneous breadth of genres and the collection’s focus on Black life allow Gipson and other patrons to very literally exist alongside those who’ve inspired the library.

      One afternoon in late April 2025, I spoke with Gipson via video about her love for the South, her commitment to meeting people where they’re at, and her hopes for The Reading Room.

      This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

      Grace: I’d like to start at the beginning. Why start a project of this nature in Houston?

      Amarie: I am a student of so many incredible Black women writers, artists, curators, thinkers, and theorists, and I really take seriously the advice that I’ve gotten through reading their work. If something doesn’t exist, you should start it. I’ve moved and migrated through these great United States for some time, and when I moved back to Houston seven and a half years ago, The Reading Room didn’t exist. I needed it to happen. I wanted to experience my books somewhere outside of my apartment, and I also wanted to create a destination for folks when they came to town, so that my friends know that they have a cool place to land. Those are the two main reasons: it didn’t exist, and I wanted somewhere to go.

      Grace: There’s a thing that happens in Chicago all the time–I think it happens anywhere that is not New York or Los Angeles–and the ways artists think about their careers and what it takes to be successful. There’s often this perception that to reach a certain level, they need to go to one of those two cities. And I would imagine Houston has a similar feeling.

      Amarie: Absolutely. I think it’s important that everyone leaves home at some point. But don’t leave because you don’t think that anything exists here. Leave because you want to see what else there is and bring it back. Come back home and create the things that you want to see here.

      I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in New York. I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in Chicago. It’s not my home. I feel more empowered here. I feel safer to have created something like this, especially in a state that is so extremely suppressed, politically, socially. But culturally, we stand firm, especially in Houston. So, it felt natural.

      Grace: What area of Houston are you currently in?

      What more can we do to connect to the people? How can we bridge the gap between the folks who care about Black art and those who care about Black people and the things that affect us? Amarie Gipson

      Amarie: The Reading Room is currently located in north downtown, right across the way from the University of Houston’s downtown campus. Downtown is not the most exciting place in the city, but it is a meeting point for all different types of cultures. The Reading Room lives inside a hybrid art studio called Sanman Studios. There are two units. They function as an event space and production studio. There’s an art gallery, an artist residency work space, and The Reading Room. This is Houston’s creative hotspot.

      Grace: I’m wondering how your institutional training has influenced The Reading Room. How have those experiences pushed you to make something that is decidedly not institutional?

      Amarie: I was just thinking about this a week ago. I came into the curatorial field around 2016, and that was at the height of philanthropic institutions looking for ways to diversify. One of the solutions was to introduce younger, undergraduate-aged students from underrepresented communities to the field. I did the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I was a junior in college at the time, and this program really gave me a crash course on what museums are like; how the exhibitions are produced, where the art is stored, and how curators work with other departments. I spent two years at the MFAH in the Prints and Drawings department, and I was always looking for Black artists. I realized quickly that if no one’s here to advocate for this work to come out of storage, no one’s ever going to see it. I was trying to sift through the collection, find, locate, and make these works more visible.

      I also recognized early in my career that people are really important to me. I started asking questions: What are the functions and responsibilities of art institutions? What are we really supposed to be doing? I know what we have done, but what is the purpose? I eventually took those questions to Chicago and New York, and I moved around to different museums to try to find the answer.

      A turning point was when I got hired at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which, for any young Black person in the art world, is the pinnacle. It’s the place. It’s where a lot of careers start. Many folks’ first job in the art world is at the Studio Museum, and they’re being shaped and molded to continue in the field. However, shortly after arriving, I realized the Studio Museum was not the place.

      In 2020, I looked around at all the different institutions across New York sharing statements of solidarity and pledging institutional and systemic changes. I wanted the Studio Museum to do more than say, “We’ve been doing this. We’ve been committed.” Because what are we doing and does that commitment to care only benefit Black artists, or does it show up in our consideration for all Black people? There are real Black people who are being targeted and locked up for protesting the fact that police are murdering us. What more can we do to connect to the people? How can we bridge the gap between the folks who care about Black art and those who care about Black people and the things that affect us? What about the people working in and for the museum? What are we doing to support the struggle outside of working our lofty little museum jobs? The response that I got is that the institution is going to keep doing what it’s been doing. And that just wasn’t enough for me. I worked in my whole career to get there, but I realized that it was not the place I thought it was or hoped it could be.

      And so I left that job and found a way to connect my beliefs with my actions. I’ve taken all of the skills that I’ve learned—how to build relationships, how to listen, how to analyze and organize things, record keeping, data management, object management, storytelling—and do something totally different, something that prioritizes everyday Black people in a way that boosts our intellectual, cultural, and creative capacity. If it’s increased access to literature, if it’s increased access to culture, if it’s just a place that has air conditioning, a place where people can come and hang out, so be it. It’s making space for it all in a way that hopefully destroys the out-of-touch, elitist hierarchy that surrounds “the work.”

      Grace: That’s one of the things that I think is so powerful about The Reading Room and the work that you’re doing. Art books are notoriously expensive, and other than sporadic free days, museums generally are not cheap either. You really do balance such a strong aesthetic perspective and a critical rigor typically associated with institutions with the accessibility of something like a public library meant for truly everyone. I wonder, on a tangible level, what goes into making a space like that?

      If it’s increased access to literature, if it’s increased access to culture, if it’s just a place that has air conditioning, a place where people can come and hang out, so be it. It’s making space for it all in a way that hopefully destroys the out-of-touch, elitist hierarchy that surrounds “the work.”Amarie Gipson

      Amarie: I didn’t have a physical space when the idea first came to life. I started working on the concept in the summer of 2021. I passed by an old American Apparel storefront in this neighborhood in Houston called Montrose. I remember going to that American Apparel as a teenager. I never could afford anything, but I was always going in there to try stuff on. I looked inside, and I was like, what would I do if I had the space? At the time, I didn’t really know how anybody could afford anything outside of paying their rent. People who had small shops, coffee shops, small businesses, kitschy little stores, I was like, what do you need to do in order to make this happen? I eventually found my way to Sanman. I met Seth Rogers, the owner. I was working for a magazine, so I started asking him questions.

      I was also DJing at the time. I had been DJing for four or five years prior to moving to Houston, but my DJ career blew up when I moved back because the culture here is so rich. Nightlife is a huge part of the city. I started saving my money from my day job, gigs, and partnerships. I would be at the events that I would play, and I’d be yelling to people over the speakers, “I’m building a library. I’m building a library!”

      I lost my job at the magazine in the fall of 2022, and I had come upon enough money to focus fully on The Reading Room. I built the website to anchor the concept. I scanned the front and back covers of 325 of the books that were in the collection at the time. I built a strong relationship with Sanman and hosted a two-day, in-person experience after I launched the site. There were about 130 people who came that weekend just to hang out. Someone approached me and said, “I didn’t even know this many books on Black art existed.” That was the moment everything made sense, when I realized I’m on the right path.

      Because this is a reference library, where the collection doesn’t circulate, we’ve got to do programs. Every single program that we do is inspired by or connected to a book that’s in the collection. That’s bringing people in, and it’s leaving them with a reading list so that they can keep coming back. That’s been the formula so far. My ambition is to garner enough support and community response so that when I break out of a shared space, the traffic is steady and the impact deepens.

      Grace: When we think about meeting people where they’re at, so much of it is about creating multiple entry points into the work that you’re doing. When someone comes in, what does that process look like? How do you engage with them?

      Amarie: It depends. Most folks are just like, oh my god, I love this space. Some other folks will be like, I’m working on a project about Black hair. Do you have any books about hair? And I’ll go and pull books about hair. I’ll explain the relationships between the books on the main display and point out how I’ve selected and placed things, then give a crash course on where you can find what.

      So even if they don’t know what they’re looking for, pointing them in a direction, they’ll be able to wayfind. It’s a destination for discovery. You come in, and you fall down a rabbit hole.

      Grace: I think of curation primarily as a way of providing context. I’m wondering how the vastness of your collection—in that there’s history, politics, and culture, and you’re not focused on only having visual art or photography—manifests as part of your commitment to accessibility. What you’re doing in making these larger connections and providing context so that people don’t need to read an artwork or image through a traditional art historical, canonical perspective, but rather can approach it through music or politics or a cultural moment, feels like an accessibility move to me.

      Amarie: You said it so beautifully. Seriously, that’s it. The books that people are familiar with are what’s going to draw them in, and then they’ll see that the bulk of the collection is about visual art. Hopefully, what they know is a gateway to what they don’t know and what I want to share. If you open up Arthur Jafa’s monograph, MAGNUMB, I want you to know Hortense Spillers and Saidiya Hartman. You gotta know all these people. Their books live here because they’re in conversation with one another. The artist’s monograph lives alongside the anthologies or the novels that inspired the creation of the work. The collection focuses heavily on visual art, just because that’s what I collected. I’m thinking about visual culture at large, but also history. How do we situate these objects within a larger continuum? We live within that continuum, so it’s important to see everything in concert with one another.

      To your point about accessibility, it starts to tap into that more tangible effect, tangible impact, right? We can have conversations about politics in here, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be through the lens of an artist, but because the book lives in the collection, we can sit and talk about anything, right? We can talk about democracy or the lack thereof. We can talk about the American flag. We can talk about anything because there’s something here that’s going to help us situate it. We can listen to the music. There are so many intersections, and having collection categories that expand beyond art and design allows for that.

      Grace: I was reading an older interview with Martine Syms recently about her publishing practice. She talked about publishing as a way to make ideas public—and then to use that to create a public around an idea because you have shared reference points. That feels very similar to what you’re doing. The Reading Room, by bringing people together and allowing these conversations, is actually creating this collective idea and an opportunity to have this shared way of thinking about something.

      Amarie: For sure. I think about that a lot. Art books, not only because of the price, are largely inaccessible to the public, but are also inaccessible to artists who deserve them. You have to go a long way in your career before somebody feels like they care enough to make a book for you. You usually have to wait for a major retrospective or survey exhibition. Or if you’re really young and hot and you’ve got gallery representation, they might make you a book.

      I’m also thinking about how The Reading Room can be a source, a bridge, or a doula that finds ways to amplify artists who are being overlooked or have been working for a really long time and still don’t have books, how their work can land in the hands of the public in a way that is accessible. I’m hoping to start a publishing branch of The Reading Room in the next couple of years. I’m going to start with zines this year and see what happens.

      I’m also thinking about the legacy of independent Black publishers across history, coming out of different cities, and what it means right now in the age of misinformation, to create a platform for truth. Yeah, it will be making art books. But we’ll also be making political pamphlets, recirculating ideas from the past. How many people know what the Black Panther Party’s 10-point platform really was? What if we made posters? How can we apply those things today? I’m interested in all of that. I want to do every single thing that I couldn’t do in those museums, that’s too taboo or too controversial to do in a museum.

      I feel way more present and clairvoyant than ever before. I realized that for the first year of running The Reading Room, I was like, I’m not reading enough. I was focused more on the structure of this thing, filling in gaps in the collection, all of that. Last summer, I made a summer reading list for myself, and I read ten books. It felt so good to just stop and read. I feel healthier, calmer, and stronger. I’ve been transformed. I want that feeling for everybody.

      The Reading Room is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday at 1109 Providence St., Houston. Explore the collection in the online archive, and follow the latest on Instagram.

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    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Art

      An Exhibition Celebrates the Self-Taught Immigrant Artists Shaping Chicago

      by

      Alfonso “Piloto” Nieves Ruiz, , born Querétaro
      Mexico, 1975, “In the name of progress,” (2017), mixed media, 69 5/8 x 26 x 24 inches. Photo by Photo by Lisa Lindvay
      . All images courtesy of Intuit Art Museum, shared with permission

      An Exhibition Celebrates the Self-Taught Immigrant Artists Shaping Chicago

      May 23, 2025

      ArtSocial Issues

      Grace Ebert

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      Built on the traditional homeland of the Sauk, Fox, and Potawatomi peoples, Chicago is a city of immigrants. Just 13 years after the city was incorporated in 1837, more than half of its residents were born overseas, having flocked to the region from across Europe and Asia alongside tens of thousands of others. Today, Chicago is home to 1.7 million immigrants, totaling 18 percent of the population.

      The inaugural exhibition at the newly renovated Intuit Art Museum celebrates this history by bringing together 22 artists with ties to the city. Comprised of 75 works across mediums, Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-Taught Art in Chicago highlights those who worked in the Midwest and established their practice outside the traditional art world models.

      Carlos Barberena, born Granada, Nicaragua, 1972, “Exodus” (2019), linocut on HW Rives paper, edition of 25, 24 x 19 inches

      Intuit is a longstanding champion of self-taught artists. Established in 1991, the museum has recognized the incredible creative contributions of those operating outside the mainstream due to economic, societal, or geographic reasons.

      One such artist is Henry Darger, who worked as a hospital custodian by day and produced an enormous collection of drawings, watercolor paintings, and cut paper works only discovered after his death. While Darger’s works now sell for prices in the high six figures, his story is unique. Historically, self-taught artists don’t often attain the critical or financial recognition of their traditionally trained peers.

      Catalyst comes at a particularly relevant moment in the U.S., as immigrants are under increasing threat. Spotlighting works with a wide array of topics and approaches, the exhibition creates a sort of contemporary tapestry of those shaping Chicago’s cultural landscape since the mid-20th century. The show intends to highlight “artists deserving of greater attention, while posing questions about access to the art world and how art comes to be defined and valued,” a statement says.

      Included are four impeccably detailed paintings by Drossos P. Skyllas (1912-1973), an Ottoman-born artist known for his enchanting hyperrealistic portraits. Charles Barbarena works with a similar devotion to precise mark-making in his portraiture. The Nicaraguan artist creates linocuts that frame instances of trauma and adversity with elaborate floral motifs, his depictions of people continually harnessing compassion and resistance.

      Drossos P. Skyllas, born Kalymnos, Ottoman Empire (now Greece), 1912-1976, “Greek Bishop” (c. 1967), oil on canvas, 65 x 41 1/2 inches

      Found object and mixed-media sculpture features prominently, too. The soaring miniature cathedral by Charles Warner, for example, interprets the sacred spaces of his childhood in Prussia through hand-carved wood and pastel paint. There’s also the figurative assemblage of Alfonso “Piloto” Nieves Ruiz, who sculpts a rendition of the Statue of Liberty. With a torso of unidentifiable hands caked in soil and detritus at her feet, Piloto’s “In the name of progress” complicates the symbol of freedom.

      Catalyst is on view through January 11, 2026.

      Charles Warner, born Prussia (now Poland), 1884-1964, “Cathedral III” (c. 1955) mixed media, 48 1/16 x 16 1/8 x 20 7/8 inches. Photo by Mark Widhalm

      Charles Warner, born Prussia (now Poland), 1884-1964, “Cathedral III” (c. 1955) mixed media, 48 1/16 x 16 1/8 x 20 7/8 inches. Photo by Mark Widhalm

      Photo by Lisa and Nick Albertson

      María Enríquez de Allen, American, born Allende, Mexico, 1907-1999, “Untitled (New life goat skull)” (1997), mixed media, 8 ¾ x 7 x 10 ½ inches. Photo by Lisa Lindvay

      Marion Perkins, American, born Marche, Arkansas, 1908-1961, “Untitled (Wire head)” (c. 1955), steel wire, 19 x 12 x 13 inches. Photo by Lisa Lindvay

      Bronislaw “Bruno” Sowa, American, born Lubomierz (Poland), 1915-1995, “Untitled” (1994), oil on board in carved pyrography frame with glass jewels, 33 x 24 x 1 1/4 inches. Photo by Lisa Lindvay

      Photo by Lisa and Nick Albertson

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    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      ‘Wonder Women’ Celebrates the Dazzling Figurative Work of Asian Diasporic Artists

      by

      Dominique Fung, “Bone Holding Fan” (2021). All images courtesy of the artists and Rizzoli, shared with permission

      ‘Wonder Women’ Celebrates the Dazzling Figurative Work of Asian Diasporic Artists

      May 15, 2025

      ArtBooksSocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

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      In February 2020, curator and gallery director Kathy Huang met artist Dominique Fung—a month before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. Their conversations, which continued throughout quarantine, served as an impetus for what would become Huang’s Wonder Women exhibitions at Jeffrey Deitch.

      During their chats, Huang and Fung lamented “the uptick in violence against Asian American communities, particularly against women and the elderly,” Huang says in the introduction to her forthcoming book, Wonder Women: Art of the Asian Diaspora.

      Mai Ta, “mirror image” (2022)

      The two also found it difficult to pinpoint when the last major exhibition had been staged that thoughtfully presented Asian artists, and neither could think of an instance where women and nonbinary artists had been the focus. Both of Huang’s exhibitions and her new book are the fruit of that desire to highlight the remarkable spectrum of figurative work being produced within the Asian diasporic community today.

      A response to racism against Asians exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Huang conceived of the shows that went on view in 2022 in New York and Los Angeles as a means to highlight the incredible, groundbreaking work made especially by women and nonbinary artists.

      Forthcoming from Rizzoli, Wonder Women shares a similar title to a poem by Genny Lim, which follows experiences of Asian women through the lens of a narrator who observes their everyday routines and considers how their lives relate to hers.

      Huang expands on this view in her approach to showcasing the work of forty artists, each represented through at least four pieces and a personal statement. These artists “subvert stereotypes and assert their identities in places where they have historically been marginalized,” Rizzoli says.

      Sally J. Han, “At Lupe’s” (2022)

      Artists like Sasha Gordon or Nadia Waheed explore identity through sometimes fantastical self-portraiture, while others highlight family, community, and colonial or patriarchal systems in the West. Some address Asian myths, legends, and visual culture, like Fung’s exploration of antique objects or Shyama Golden’s otherworldly scenes in which hybrid human-animals interact with nature or urban spaces.

      Wonder Women will be released on May 20. Order your copy from the Colossal Shop.

      Shyama Golden, “The Passage” (2022)

      Chelsea Ryoko Wong, “It’s Mah Jong Time!” (2022)

      Nadia Waheed, “Bolides/ 852” (2022)

      Cover featuring a painting by Sasha Gordon

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    • 238 Shares129 Views

      in Art

      Five Years in the Making, an MiG-21 Fighter Jet Gets a Glow-Up from Tens of Millions of Glass Beads

      by

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos. All images courtesy of Ralph Ziman, shared with permission

      Five Years in the Making, an MiG-21 Fighter Jet Gets a Glow-Up from Tens of Millions of Glass Beads

      April 15, 2025

      ArtHistorySocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

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      “We’re going to make stuff out of beads that is going to take people’s breath away,” says Ralph Ziman in the trailer for “The MiG-21 Project,” a military jet that he and a transcontinental team coated nose to tail in millions upon millions of glass beads.

      For the past 12 years, the Los Angeles-based artist has examined the impacts of the Cold War Era and the global arms trade through a trilogy titled Weapons of Mass Production, motivated by his upbringing in Apartheid-era South Africa. More than half a decade in the making, “The MiG-21 Project” completes the series.

      The first installment, “The AK-47 Project,” reimagined the aesthetic of one of the world’s most ubiquitous wartime weapons, the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, by coating dozens of the guns in colorful glass beads. The second project revolved around the Casspir, a heavy-duty Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAPV) introduced in the 1970s, which he likewise ornamented in vibrant geometric patterns.

      “The idea was to take these weapons of war and to repurpose them,” Ziman says, flipping the narrative about icons of violence and transforming them instead into symbols of resilience, collaboration, and collectivity. Vehicles and firearms morph into a theater of hope and strength in the face of a terrible 20th-century legacy.

      Apartheid, which in Afrikaans means “separateness,” is the name assigned by the minority white-ruled Nationalist Party of South Africa to a harsh system of racial segregation that began in 1948. The period lasted until 1991 and was closely linked within the context of international relations to the Cold War as tensions erupted between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. Spurred by the deterioration of the two countries’ WWII alliance and fears about the spread of Communism into the West, the war began in 1947 and also ended in 1991 when the U.S.S.R. was dissolved.

      During this time, the Russians produced a fighter jet called the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. The plane is “the most-produced supersonic fighter aircraft of all time,” Ziman says. “The Russians built 12,500 MiG-21s, and they’re still in use today—just like the Casspir and just like the AK-47s. But it’s one thing to say, hey, I want to bead a MiG, and then the next thing, you’ve got a 48-foot MiG sitting in your studio.”

      The MiG-21 cockpit

      “The MiG-21 Project” combines photography and costume design with historical research and time-honored Indigenous craft. The project encompasses not only the jet but a series of cinematic photographs and elaborate Afrofuturist regalia inspired by military flight suits, African tribal textiles, and space travel.

      Ziman’s team comprises numerous skilled artisans from Zimbabwe and Indigenous Ndebele women from South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province, who are renowned for their beadwork. For the Ndebele, beadwork is a means of expressing cultural identity and rites of passage, taking on powerful political connotations in the 20th century as it became associated with pre-colonial African traditions and identity.

      Tapping into the lessons of our not-so-distant past, Ziman addresses current conflicts like war and the global arms race, modern colonialism, systemic racism, and white supremacy through the lens of Apartheid. Funds raised throughout the process, part of the mission of the Weapons of Mass Production trilogy as a whole, are being donated to the people of Ukraine in support of the country’s ongoing conflict with Russia.

      You’ll be able to see the “The MiG-21 Project” later this year in Seattle, where it will be on view from June 21 to January 26, 2026, at the Museum of Flight. Explore more on Ziman’s website.

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

      “Hero Of Cuito Cuanavale,” Inkjet on Moab Entrada paper, 43 x 56 inches

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

      Detail of the MiG-21 cockpit

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

      “The Raider and Her MiG-21,” Inkjet on Moab Entrada paper, 43 x 56 inches

      Photo by Mauricio Hoyos

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