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NUMBER 5: COLONIALISM: THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
Group Art Show Curated by Lili Bernard
at William Grant Still Arts Center
December 20, 2011
Review by MAT GLEASON, contributing writer for Huffington Post, editor & founder Coagula Art Journal, owner Coagula Curatorial art gallery, Los Angeles
Far from a knee-jerk political sob-festing guilt trip, this group show (curated by painter Lili Bernard) was a potpourri of sensual reconciliation delivered in diverse styles and attitudes. It wouldn't be like the mainstream art press in this town to make it down to South Central, so while the LA critical press was wallowing in the mire of the 1960s nostalgia shows, artists weren't waiting for written permission to explore a deep part of their identity.
From Lavialle Campbell's sculpted throne of an afro to Stephanie Mercado's dresses of colonized mappings dominated by the dark blue sea, the message here was that an autonomy from anyone and everyone's narrative but their own gives one the strength to create; and in that autonomy might be the course an artist takes to get to his or her deepest truths fastest and best. |
