About the exhibition:

the word existence is an aporia. 
so is life & death,
ending & beginning, 
human & non-human. 
what if endings are a given frontier? a boundary? 
does death ends?

Offering ground for the complexity of articulation, terrains: into black existence offers a place to examine how artistic expression, emotional, and intellectual work collapse into constellations that complicate colonial boundaries of existence and endings. The exhibition explores the poetics and diffusion of contradictions placed within the same container (between past and present, reality and fiction, life and death, endings and beginnings) just as it evinces the opaqueness of black existence. Holding their multifarious practices in mind, each artist proposes a wander through the terrains of existence, gathering scenes of encounter in asking what intimacies and opaqueness impede and make possible. In offering alternative scenes unbound by imperial certainties, we might supplement, interrupt, extend, and create different types of existential questions.

The exhibition will be on view in Gallery 1 at Da Vinci Art Alliance from August 30 - September 24 with an opening reception on Saturday, September 2nd from 5-8pm and a closing artist talk on Sunday, September 24 from 12-2pm.

About the CURATOR:

mai eltahir is a curator and cultural worker based in Philadelphia, PA by way of Flint, MI. mai is interested in the poetics and diffusion of contradictions placed within the same container (between past and present, reality and fiction, life and death, endings and beginnings) just as it evinces the opaqueness of blackness.

By asking what intimacies of existence and collective struggle impede and make possible, her work proposes dynamic wandering and gathering scenes of encounter. mai’s practice attempts to compile voices and practices that complicate colonial meanings of endings, existence, and yearning.

ARTISTS FEATURED:

Aamirah Khafre, Jonathan Gonzalez, David Norori, zekkereya el-magharbel, Danielle Morris, Tafari Robertson, and Ingrid Raphaël

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Aamirah Khafre is an interdisciplinary artist focused in printmaking, graphic design, and textiles. A.K. is a native to and currently practicing in Philadelphia, PA. With a BFA from California College of the Arts. The relationship of process and presence is a driving theme throughout her works such as the Chromatic series. She uses mediums as a tool to form a place out of abstract emotions. Finding clarity and discoveries within the subconscious choices of hands-on mediums and results. She is mainly exercised in printmaking, with experience at the Fabric Workshop and the Museum, Brandywine Workshop and Archives, and Philadelphia School District. A.K. has collaborated with other artists in events such as A Curators Circle, A Hood Perspective, A Good Perspective and Speaking My Language: The Love Addition.

Jonathan González is an artist working at the intersections of performance, sculpture, text, video and time-based media. Their practice speculates on circumstances of land, economies of labor, and the conditions that figure black and contemporary life through the aperture of black geographies and the built environment. 

Their work has been presented by MoMA, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art/The Momentary, Seoul Art Museum, BRIC, among others. Their writings have been published by EAR | WAVE | EVENT, Performance Studies Journal, OPERAnews, Contact Quarterly, Cultured Magazine, Movement Research Performance Journal, 53rd State Press and deem journal.

Their work has been supported by the Rauschenberg Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Trinidad Performance Institute, Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Shandaken Project on Governors Island.

González is a professor with University of the Arts (School of Critical Studies and Dance) and Columbia University (Graduate School for Art, Architecture and Planning). 

David Norori is a New Jersey based photographer. His practice often revolves around exploring the nuances of daily life. He focuses on themes of identity, race, and community.

zekkereya el-magharbel is an artist, composer, and trombonist based in Los Angeles, CA. They are a member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and have worked with luminaries from across creative spectra, from members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the AACM, and of course UGMAA. Their work and research interests often involve intersections with African and Islamic worlds, highlighting and uplifting cross polinations that often fall by the way side. Recently these intrests have inspired sonic  and visual landscapes in the tradition of Sufi poets in which the heart is key to the pursuit of nature's secrets.  

Danielle Morris (°1993, Philadelphia) is a self-taught photographer who mainly works in street and self-portraiture. With a conceptual approach, Morris absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice.

Her works are often about the relativity of perception and its direct contrast with the absolution of existence. Morris focuses on the psychosocial effects life's mundane and extraordinary experiences have on people in the ‘public space’ or more specifically, in spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment; the private space, and the space that is expressed through proximity to her subjects and their otherness to her sense of self. Her method of visual storytelling invokes contemplation and encourages self-reflection.

Morris is the Director of Education at Tilt Institute for the contemporary Image, received a curatorial internship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, was a teaching artist in Drexel University’s ‘Writers Room’ residency, and a contributing artist in the 2018-2019 “Women’s Mobile Museum” residency led by South African visual activist Zanele Muholi. She has exhibited in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ in the Works on Paper Gallery; and the Colored Girls Museum’s 2019 “In Search of the Colored Girl” exhibition. Morris was also a contributing artist in the 2018 SPACES Residency, "Home Court". She has exhibited at The Barnes Foundation through Let's Connect Philly, where she placed in the top 20 of the participating artists. Commercially, she has worked with Apple, Bulgari, Louboutin, Roc Nation, and Tiffany and Co.

Ingrid Raphaël is a filmmaker, educator and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores image making, oscillations between alienation and belonging, folktale as memory, and dance codes as containers for – and manifestations of — Black-futures-making. 

They co-founded the nomadic microcinema, NO EVIL EYE CINEMA and co-designed its alternative film school FILM FUTURA where they teach Afro-Futurism on Screen. They have also taught film and art workshops with Black Quantum Futurism, Mono No Aware, Eyebeam, Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Young Artist Program.

Their upcoming film SILK imagines a future with server-technology loss, portals, environmental degradation, and two strangers on an unlikely quest for reconciliation; with spiderwebs as metaphors for that possibility. As a documentary filmmaker, they co-directed They Won’t Call It Murder: available on Vimeo’s Shorts Staff Picks, and other short video essays like MOVING BODY, Grief, and An Ode to Cbus, Ohio.

Tafari Robertson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, PA. He began his artist journey through painting, illustration and now works across mediums to explore the experiences layered within Black cultural experiences. He questions what are the artistic effects of space, the elements that create those experiences, and what ripples out when these spaces are created, sustained or destroyed. 

His Black Space Archive is a series of audio collages developed through an investigative oral history practice conducted with historically Black bookstores across the U.S. Through interviews with owners and patrons, he pieces together themes and histories to create a new conversation for audiences to engage with, highlighting the energies preserved in these spaces that have upheld Black culture and are too often lost without notice.

Currently developing his speculative practice, his Future Forms explore the effects of administrative design toward creating perceptions of permanence and authority as pillars for institutional buy-in. He uses this work to build on the imaginative possibilities of creating new worlds for those ignored or diminished in our current frameworks.

About The Kathryn Pannepacker Track

This fellowship provides an opportunity for one emerging artist/curator to curate an exhibition exploring social, political, or cultural content that engages local communities in the Da Vinci Art Alliance gallery space. By spearheading the exhibition process including theme creation, artist management, and ultimate layout and presentation, the Kathryn Pannepacker Fellow is able to develop and enhance their skill set. The Kathryn Pannepacker Fellow will work alongside DVAA's Exhibitions and Programming Director to oversee, advise, and install the exhibition.

Named for textile/visual/community artist Kathryn Pannepacker who revitalized DVAA in 1997 and who continues to work deeply with local communities around criminal justice, homelessness, substance abuse and other mental/behavioral health challenges.

Learn more about our Fellowship here.