Courtesy of Jackson Fine Arts, Lalla Essaydi
Lalla Essaydi Conflicting Identities No. 5, 2023
From the venue:
Conflicting Identities 11 April – 27 July 2024
Lalla Essaydi is a Moroccan-born artist living and working in the United States. Lalla Essaydi completed her Masters in Fine Arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/TUFTS University in May 2003. The artist is currently represented by two galleries in the United States: the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City.
Lalla Essaydi’s work is heavily inspired by her Moroccan heritage and is characterized by the combination of Islamic calligraphy with artistic representations of the female body. In her work, Essaydi explores the complexities of Arab female identity, infusing it with her personal experiences as an Arab woman. Lalla Essaydi often looks back to her childhood in Morocco to express experiences as a girl from the retrospective of adulthood. In doing so, Essaydi explores notions of displacement, insecurity, and the intertwining of past and present.
The artist uses various media, including painting, videography, film, analog photography and installations. In her works, Lalla Essaydi often uses Orientalist imagery from the Western art tradition. In this way, she invites viewers to re-contextualize Oriental mythologies and counter distorted narratives of Arab culture perpetuated through the Western lens.
Essaydi’s photographs serve to document intimate spaces and time periods, particularly those of the artist’s own childhood. Essaydi’s work is the physical manifestation of her exploration of identity and home in both physical and psychological terms. Through her photographs, Essaydi returns to the culture of her childhood and attempts to re-encounter her childlike self while exploring her relationships with the converging territories that make up her current existence.
Essaydi’s photography depicts dilapidated domestic spaces, metaphorically representing the spaces of her childhood and the converging spaces she now moves through as an adult. Her depiction of women refutes notions of Western sexual fantasy perpetuated by the fiction of “Orientalism,” and her depiction of “space” marks a notable departure from public life and a turn toward private life. In doing so, Essaydi focuses on the sphere of femininity as opposed to male-dominated public spaces.
Lalla Essaydi’s photographs have been exhibited in cities across the United States and internationally, including Japan, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Sharjah, and the United Kingdom. Her work is included in numerous notable collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fries Museum, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Kodak Museum of Art.
Essaydi’s book, Crossing Boundaries, Bridging Cultures (2015), delves deeper into Essaydi’s fascination with physical and social spaces in different places and cultures. The monograph offers readers a critical examination of female Arab identity and includes essays and sumptuous illustrations that explore the main themes that underpin much of Essaydi’s photographic work.
Exhibition page here
Shanequa Gay
Gateway to the South 11 April – 27 July 2024
Shanequa Gay is a visual artist born in Atlanta, GA. She is best known for her surrealist acrylic paintings that focus on the multiple universes within the black woman’s mind. Her work evaluates tradition, place, storytelling, and subject matter to develop imaginative dialogues and alternative strategies for self-expression.
Through her paintings, illustrations, videos, performances and monumental sculptures, Gay creates environments out of monuments and rituals, representing mythical figures, new gods and images of people affected by inequality.
Gay graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with a BA in painting, an AA in graphic design and fashion marketing from the Art Institute of Atlanta, and an MFA from Georgia State University. Some of Gay’s notable works, Devout Griot and The Fair Game Project, include a thematic vision of hybrid beings as a central focus. Devout Griot examines the historical and contemporary social issues of hybrid cultures from the perspective of female ancestors, showing how these cultures have often been rendered invisible and their identities denied. This interpretation also applies to The Fair Game Project, where these hybrid subjects “represent hunted black men,” as Gay noted in an interview in Black Art in America.
Gay’s multidisciplinary work offers a different perspective on various subjects, but also stimulates the imagination. Her works often use bold colors, mixed media, and sharp lines to capture raw emotion – with her sensitive subject matter sometimes eliciting mixed reactions.
Shanequa Gay lives and works in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, where she is also an active member of the Atlanta arts community. In her career, Gay has received many accolades, including being one of 10 artists selected for OFF THE WALL, a citywide civil rights and social justice initiative spearheaded by WonderRoot and the Atlanta 2018 Super Bowl Host Committee. Gay’s other accomplishments include being selected as the illustrator for the First Lady’s Luncheon host gift for First Lady Michelle Obama in 2013, television and film appearances in Lionsgate’s Addicted, the BET series Being Mary Jane and Zoe Ever After, and the OWN series Greenleaf in 2016.
Gay has exhibited her work at prestigious venues and events including the Chattanooga African American Museum, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Hammonds House Museum, Emory University, Mason Murer, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Her work can be found in public and private collections, including the collection of actor Samuel L. Jackson and the permanent collection of SCAD Hong Kong. Gay has also exhibited her work in Japan and South Africa.
In 2022, Shanequa Gay will participate in the European Cultural Centre exhibition as part of the 59th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy.
Exhibition page here
Through the lens of Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn and Eudora Welty
11 April – 13 July 2024
In the exhibition space, discover an exhibition of works from the 1930s by legendary photographers Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein and Ben Shahn. Through their lenses, these celebrated artists captured the essence of America during a pivotal era, offering insights into the lives of ordinary people and the social landscape of the time. From Evans’ striking portraits to Rothstein’s powerful documentation of the Dust Bowl and Shahn’s poignant images of rural life, this selection presents a captivating visual narrative of the Great Depression era.
Exhibition page here
