RSVP HERE In conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, the current exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center, CEREMONIES will be screened IN PERSON, in partnership with South Side […]
Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Adam Davis brings his 1850's tintype photo practice to the South Side Community Art Center! On June 3rd and June 4th, South Side Community Art […]
Join us with Rachael Pierce on Saturday, June 4th for a Queer history tour of the Bronzeville area, as well as learning more about SSCAC's role in highlighting queer histories […]
THE FRONT: FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY DARLING SHEAR, SHANTA NURULLAH, AND ZAHRA BAKER! We’re excited to host these dynamic performers who will be activating our Burroughs Gallery with performances that […]
SSCAC CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH WITH MUSIC, POETRY, COMEDY, AND FAMILY ART MAKING ACTIVATIONS - FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! FAMILY ART MAKING ACTIVITIES 12 - 2PM *POLAROID PHOTO ACTIVATION […]
A film screening and community gathering in honor of the late Mama Gloria Allen. Luchina Fisher will screen her film Mama Gloria, in addition to honoring the life and impact […]
A three-person exhibition featuring new and recent works from Chicago-based artists Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and R. Treshawn Williamson exploring homeplace through sculpture, self-imaging, & materialism. […]
Artist Ajmal 'Mas Man' Millar will facilitate a participatory sound activation referencing his Trinidadian heritage. We invite you to join us with artist Ajmal 'Mas Man' Millar for a special […]
D-Composed brings their Music in Color experience to life at South Side Community Art Center! Founded in 2017 by Kori Coleman, D-Composed is a chamber music experience that celebrates […]
Metropolis: A City In Black, by Cecil McDonald Jr., is a public installation in the historic bay windows of South Side Community Art Center. South Side Community Art Center invites you to attend and celebrate the launch of Cecil McDonald's public art installation, programmed alongside the final Bronzeville Art District Trolley Tour! As a […]
Performative activations from current exhibiting artists R. Treshawn Williamson & Lola Ayisha Ogbara, with special guest artist Jada-Amina. Borrowed from Lola Ayisha Ogbara’s video work 'Bound For Glory' from her continuing series The Perfect Servant, THE GESTURE ITSELF IS PROTECTION SPELL proposes questions of the body, disruption, labor, acts of looking, and materiality through movement, sound, […]
HOMECOMING: ON THE YARD 2022 HOMECOMING will be SSCAC's first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists! RSVP HERE HOMECOMING will be SSCAC's first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists to further celebrate our legacy as the first Black […]
Works in EMERGENCE are diverse in their subject matter and media, but a few themes reappear throughout. Working in abstraction or in the traditionally peaceful genre of still life, artists like William Carter, Allen Stringfellow, and Jonathan Green express themes of interiority or sociability, history or modernity. Notably, Stringfellow and Ralph Arnold both experimented with media and materials and worked extensively in collage, which allowed them to combine abstract design, figurative imagery, and on occasion political ideas.
Viewers typically expect Black artists to focus on particular aspects of their social and political identities within their work. Where might those expectations come from? Still life, abstraction, and collage may express many different things about artists’ interior lives and their visual and social observation, whether connected to public manifestations of identity or not.
William Carter’s mid-century still life Untitled presents a group of vibrantly colored bottles that invite the viewer’s gaze, set against a similarly colorful background with floral elements like grapes and leaves. They give evidence of conviviality and might be interpreted as symbols of social gatherings, but they could also just be a collection of pleasing forms. We might put Carter’s still life in dialogue with that of Jonathan Green, who became close friends with Carter while living in Chicago. Green’s close-up view of an eloquently simple composition presents oranges, a pear, and a lemon in front of two vessels. Works like this piece call the viewer to examine the objects the artist chose to include, to consider how they interact with each other like bodies in space, and to reflect on their meaning within the traditional genre of still life painting.
Collage might suggest the piecing together of identity from different components that might not usually coexist, giving room for more expansive imaginations of meaning than a straightforward representational image might allow. It could also just be an inventive way of combining colors, shapes, and textures. Allen Stringfellow’s Untitled, a collage from 1962, brings familiar motifs from still life—fruit and flowers, desserts and glassware—together with imagery of artist’s models and performers. Layered with paint and tissue paper that frustrate the viewer’s attempt to get clarity on the subject matter, the bursts of form and colors hint at the splashy abstraction of Stringfellow’s untitled, textured painting made from house paint and particulate on cardboard. Here the artist tests commonly found materials to create new textures and plays with the creation of colors and finishes that diverge from “Western” academic painting methods.
In The Waiting, Arnold constructs a large collage from different paper components, lace, and paint. In the piece, elements of European and African art are placed in dialogue with one another, while some figures appear alone and isolated, others in large groups. Without giving easy answers, Arnold implies questions about social issues. Who is waiting, and for what? In his Love Sign II, which bears the words “Love is Universal,” Arnold asserts the equal validity of all types of romantic affection and love, utilizing collage to convey a more straightforward political message.
