UTA Artist House is happy to announce the upcoming opening of We Insist Upon Ourselves in Perpetuity All through the Universe, a twin exhibition from the artistic minds of two Juxtapoz featured alums, April Bey and Kim Dacres. The exhibition brings collectively the 2 artists, bonding over three key concepts: the marvel and great thing about Black queer people and ladies, the legalese fluency wanted to be a profitable artist within the artistic trade, and a love of studying magical tales the place people are gods unto themselves.
Bey’s work facilities on the artist’s imagined alternate universe the place glitter is the foreign money and the place guests journey through portals of natural world, in addition to being deeply rooted in her rigorous studying follow, love of books and obsession with Sci-Fi. She incorporates colourful fake fur, glitter, vinyl and woven textiles resembling brocade and velvet–supplies wealthy in queerness–to craft icons across the photographs of real-life figures from her group. Her work, which spans throughout a number of media resembling printed textiles, synthography, weaving and elaborate stitching, displays her background in printmaking and design and leads to richly layered works rooted within the intersections of post-colonialism, Speculative Futurism, web tradition and feminism.
A bona fide bibliophile and self-described “Blerd,” Bey attracts inspiration from a myriad of various sources, lots of them books within the fantasy, sci-fi, and futuristic realm together with comics and graphic novels. These numerous wells of inspiration come collectively to kind her world, Atlantica. The origin of Atlantica comes from a formative dialog along with her father who used the language of sci-fi to explain the expertise of otherness and racial oppression, positioning the artist as an alien on a mission to look at and report on the circumstances of Earth. They could additionally encounter Pineapple Afrovenuses, deities that may reduce down journey time and support in transportation at a speedy velocity, leaving the traveler with pineapple scented hair and pores and skin. Populating the library are Calathea Crotalus Cerastes, a hybrid plant which fruits the palms of Black femmes with freshly manicured nails–they too act as transportation units that develop naturally on Atlantica. On Atlantica, librarians are the custodians of the historical past of the world, their job is of the utmost significance and essential to the basic operations of Atlantica.
Kim Dacres’ work focuses on the multifaceted tensions inherent inside Black ladies’s self- presentation and the reception of that presentation in our modern social atmosphere, highlighting the sculptural function that hairstyles and adornments play within the day by day gendered lives of Black ladies, women, and queer individuals. Dacres underscores the facility of such kinds to say the validity of 1’s lived, however at instances hid, life experiences. Dacres makes use of rubber from recycled tires to create sculptures celebrating these influential forces in her life. Her works are acts of sculptural translation, embodying the assertive vitality and presence of the individuals, notably the Black ladies, that form her identity-based and geographic communities – ladies the artist might personally know or encounter, in addition to fictional characters, performers, athletes, and musicians which have solid her expertise.
Whereas drawn initially to the rubber tire materials for its uniquely accessible, forgiving, and malleable nature, the artist additional mines the fabric’s metaphorical resonances along with her personal private expertise and the broader cycle of injustice and oppression inflicted upon Black and Brown individuals in America; all regardless of the contributions these exact same people give as teachable moments to maneuver the world and ahead. By way of the alchemical transformation of object into artwork, Dacres infuses the discarded supplies with new life and pleasure, one reaching far past its preordained function