NEW ORLEANS (press release) – The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans collaborates with SEEING BLACK to present Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture, opening Saturday, Jan. 6.
“The Contemporary Arts Center is excited to partner with SEEING BLACK to present this groundbreaking exhibition, reflecting our commitment to investing in artists and advancing the value and power of art of our time,” states Jaclyn Majewski Woollam, interim executive director of the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.
Curated by the Contemporary Arts Center’s Resident Curator Shana M. griffin, Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture is an exercise in the unconventional and the splendid. From the invisible to the obvious, the mundane to the spectacular, the overlooked to the known, the erased, and the remembered, Gestures of Refusal investigates how we experience and render Blackness visible.
“The exhibition brings attention to the ways contemporary photographers and visual artists wield the power of the camera and their creative practices to discern, behold, celebrate, and document people, places, events, collective memories, encounters, and other ever-present moments of Blackness that refuse the violence of erasure and subjectivity,” states Shana M. griffin, feminist activist and researcher. “Gestures of Refusal is a living memory and future present, engaging a vernacular language that commands recognition, representing a Black visuality of expansive possibilities.”
Featuring the work of more than one hundred contemporary Black artists, five immersive installations, and over two hundred art objects, the artists in this exhibition explore a range of photographic frequencies, styles, tenses, punctuation, and rhythmic scores, creating new visual vocabularies for futurity.
The exhibition includes work from Marion Porter, Maurice Martinez, Harold Baquet, Larry Songy, Terri Mimms, Chandra McCormick, Keith Calhoun, Ron Bechet, Sekou Fela, Leslie-Claire Spillman, Danette M. Vincent, Tod Smith, Gus Bennett, Selwhyn Sthaddeus “Polo Silk” Terrell, L. Kasimu Harris, Christine “CFreedom” Brown, Ashley Lorraine, Abdul Aziz, Bruce “SunPie” Barnes, danielle c. miles, Jose Cotto, Delaney George, MaPo Kinnord, Sokari Ekine, Trenity Thomas, Carla Williams, Freddye Hill, Malik Bartholomew, and Martin Payton.
Gestures of Refusal is the third in a series of exhibitions organized by SEEING BLACK. First Frame, the preludial exhibition of SEEING BLACK: Black Photography in New Orleans 1840 & Beyond, was on view at the New Orleans African American Museum from October 6, 2022, to June 4, 2023. The second exhibition, In the Spirit of Black, was on view at the Ashé Culture Arts Center and Ashé Power House Theater from March 30 to June 4, 2023. The final exhibition of the four-part series will open in the spring of 2024 at Xavier University of Louisiana Art Gallery.
The opening reception of Gestures of Refusal is Saturday, Jan. 6, from 6 – 10 p.m. The exhibition will be on view at the Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., until April 29, 2024, from Wednesdays to Mondays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Public programming will follow the exhibition’s opening, including curatorial walkthroughs, panel discussions, workshops, and more. Members of the press are invited to a preview on Thursday, Jan. 4, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Works in Gestures of Refusal are courtesy of the exhibiting artists and from the collections of the Amistad Research Center, Tex Stevens Collection, New Orleans Public Library, Xavier University of Louisiana Digital Archives and Collections, the Historic New Orleans Collection, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate Archives, and the Louisiana Public Broadcasting for PBS Digital Studios and Houston Public Media.
For more information, visit cacno.org and seeingblack.org.
