Carmen Maria Machado on Power
Plus, the largest survey of Arthur Jafa’s work is coming to New York.
You may know Carmen Maria Machado as the author of the acclaimed short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, or her memoir In the Dream House, a candid chronicle of abuse in a queer relationship, or her many other published works. But the Cuban-American writer, who was a photography major in college, has also long collaborated with visual artists. Today she speaks to Associate Editor Lakshmi Rivera Amin about her latest venture as a guest curator of painter Rocío García’s exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art — a show she hopes will inspire us “to be interested in both the violence and power of the state, and the power as we exchange it between people.”
Also today: a major Arthur Jafa survey coming to the New Museum, a historic Indigenous art acquisition in Phoenix, and the latest installment in Beer With a Painter, featuring Palestinian-American icon Samia Halaby.
This weekend, I'll be at the Albuquerque Museum for Legacy Lab New Mexico, speaking on a subject that's dear to us here at Hyperallergic — how artists can leave their mark on the world. If you’re signed up, I hope you’ll come and say hello.
—Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor
What Carmen Maria Machado Wants You to Know About Power
For The Object of Power is Power, titled after a quote from George Orwell’s 1984, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in Soho invited author Carmen Maria Machado to collaborate with Head Curator Stamatina Gregory on a one-room show of paintings by Cuban artist Rocío García.
Walking through the dim cave of the gallery, I felt instantly that Machado had met her match: García’s massive canvases narrate tales of their own, trading in the very same questions of sexuality and power that the author has long probed through language. | Lakshmi Rivera Amin
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Health, Technology, Art, and Design Intersect at UC Davis Graduate Showcase
On view at the Manetti Shrem Museum through June 20, the multidisciplinary exhibition features projects by 20 arts graduate students.
News
- The New Museum will hold the largest-ever survey exhibition of works by filmmaker and multimedia artist Arthur Jafa this September, Titled I Am Tony in honor of the late jazz drummer Tony Williams.
- Phoenix Art Museum will soon showcase 100 works by Native American artists tracing creative resilience over the course of a century following its largest-ever gift of Native American art.
From Our Critics
An Artist Duo’s Haven of Synthetic Hair
Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez steamed, cut, and sewed together lengths of hair by hand to create an ecosystem of biomorphic sculptures. | Chie Xu
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The Bennett Prize Opens Fifth Call for Entries
Women figurative realist painters can enter to win $75,000 and a traveling solo exhibition. Applications are open through September 19.
Community
Beer With a Painter: Samia Halaby
At her longtime studio in Tribeca, the Palestinian-American painter discussed her experimentation with color and how she “accidentally stepped into abstraction.”
Read MoreRemembering Willie Valentine, Marjane Satrapi, and John Claridge
This week, we honor a champion of Southeast Asian art, the giant behind “Persepolis,” and a photographer dedicated to London’s East End.
Read MoreMember Comment
Michael Szpakowski on “My Queasy, Forest-Scented Stroll Through LA’s New AI Art Museum”
From the Archive
Confronting the Limits of Catharsis in a Video About Black American Life
Arthur Jafa’s “Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death” communicates a truth about black life in the US: Many of our public encounters erupt in violence or are premised upon violence. | Seph Rodney
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