Fall 2023-Spring/Summer 2024
Irmandade
Ashé Market
The Community Artists’ Collective kicked off its 16th Annual Ashé Market December 9.
The market featured a curated selection of unique gifts items made by local artisans. Additional items included African fabric, masks and other art pieces from various African nations.
“Irmandade,” an exhibition opening September 23, at the Community Artists’ Collective, represents artist Ibraim Nascimento’s search for the community and brotherhood/sisterhood which was disconnected in the Afro-diaspora during slavery.
Nascimento is an Afro-Brazilian artist from the Recôncavo region of Bahia, who has moved to Houston and continues his artist-activist links to the defense of indigenous rights in Brazil. His work has been exhibited in Brazil and the United States.
This exhibition illustrates the bond of kinship between brothers, sisters and the deeper connection between diverse people. Irmandade is the Portuguese word for brotherhood, the bond of kinship.
Using the lines of thread as an analogy for connection and reconnection, the artist connects each canvas with red thread. On the canvases are images of Black people connected to each other by blood and ancestry. Sometimes these threads signify a search for something deeper, perhaps belonging, self, a lost connection or a confirmation of the existence of this concept.
During the period of slavery Black people were connected to each other by chains and taken from their homeland, and today they reconnect in a shared gaze, customs, stories and in their collectivities and spirit. This reunion is the possibility of rebuilding the notion of “irmandade.”
The exhibition will continue at The Collective, 4101 San Jacinto, Suite 116, through November 25. The opening reception on Saturday, September 23, is from 2 to 5 p.m. with a performance by Nascimento.
The artist will deliver a talk October 14 at 2 p.m., and he and performance artist Victor Givens will collaborate on a presentation in November, date to be announced
Here and Now: Cultural Expressions
“Here and Now: Cultural Expressions,” an exhibition celebrating Black History Month, opened Thursday, February 1, at the Community Artists’ Collective.
The exhibition showcases art from The Collective’s permanent collection and included works by contemporary artists Ann Johnson, Gail P. Mallory, Shani Crowe, Earlie Hudnall, Delita P. Martin, Aesha Lee, Mark Francis, Dominic Clay, Ricardo Francis, Latonia Allen, Jo El Mercer, Ibraim Nascimento and Bert Long. The Museum of Fine Arts Houston Black Art Crawl in mid-February included the exhibition.
The exhibition was up at The Collective through February 29. The opening reception was on February 1 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Familial Landscapes (Re)Imagined
▪ Exhibition Title: Familial Landscapes (Re)imagined
▪ On View: March 16 – April 30, 2024
▪ Opening Reception: Saturday, March 16, 2024, 2 to 5 p.m.
▪ Artist Talk and Workshop: March 28, 2024, 6 to 8 p.m.
▪ Venue: JourneyHTX, 3219 Almeda Genoa Rd., Houston, TX 77047
Familial Landscapes (Re)imagined brings together the past, present, and future, within April M. Frazier’s ancestrally connected landscapes of Fayette and Wharton counties, Texas. Archived photographs of her grand, great grand and second great grandparents are juxtaposed against portraits of herself, as she acknowledges her past while looking toward the future. Familial Landscapes is an introspective journey of remembrance of what came before on those lands, while (re)imagining the meaning of being present now, in place and time.
April is a photographic based artist and native Houstonian. She creatively combines ancestral photographs and decades of research tracing her roots in Texas to create environmental portraits on lands with familial connection from the time of enslavement to the present. Pairing artifacts left behind like jewelry, bricks and inherent knowledge, with visions of the current landscape, April weaves together her story of becoming the black woman she is. Her art practice converges at the four-way intersection of inherent memory, tethered connection to the landscape, ancestral and historical investigation and lived experience.
In Familial Landscapes (Re)imagined, April shifts the traditional environmental gaze to (re)focus on the seven generations of her people which inhabited the rural lands Texas long before and aims to celebrate their stories through that lens. From discovering her second great grandfather Emanuel Roberts acquired over 200 acres of land in Wharton in 1893, to finding the final resting place in Muldoon of her fourth great grandmother Amanda, April strives to (re)imagine and (re)write the visual narrative of the African American in Texas. Familial Landscapes also intersects the work of The Witness Series, a female led and curated art experience which explores the profound historical connection that communities of color have with land and invites the (re)turn of those communities to the bounty of green spaces across Texas.
For More Information - Familial Landscapes (Re)imagined Website