BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at [email protected]!
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A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday | Installation of Banner by Dread Scott
Tuesday, August 7th • 6 pm
Corner of North Avenue and Saint Paul Street
The installation of Dread Scott’s banner was organized by ArtSite Old Goucher, led by Kelly Cross, and produced by KADIST. Joseph del Pesco is the International Director of KADIST.
Read our interview with Dread Scott here to find out more.
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Tavares Strachan: In broad daylight | Reception + Lighting
Wednesday, August 8th • 7pm
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive : 21218
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announces it will present Tavares Strachan: In broad daylight, a new site-specific work commissioned by the museum that will be on view beginning August 8, 2018. For this installation, New York-based conceptual artist Tavares Strachan has rendered the words “In broad daylight” in a flowing neon script, setting the BMA’s historic façade aglow day and night for the next six months. This simple statement can be interpreted as a question, an exclamation, an affirmation, or a challenge. The significance of the work shifts in relation to the perspectives of its viewers, reflecting the beliefs, values, and experiences of those that encounter it.
“In broad daylight invites viewers to see the museum in a new light while they consider the meaning of the illuminated words,” said BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director Christopher Bedford. “It also signifies the BMA’s commitment to the city of Baltimore and to doing all that is required to become an indispensable part of civic life in 2018 and beyond.”
A reception with the artist will be held on Wednesday, August 8, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. This free event will include refreshments and live music. The neon work will be formally illuminated at 8 p.m.
Tavares Strachan explores the intersection of science, art, and the environment to create works that are ambitious in scale and scope. Many of his projects investigate the nature of invisibility, calling into question the conditions that frame and legitimize certain cultural knowledge and histories while obscuring and erasing others. Strachan also aims to build and connect communities through his work by making networks of power more visible, prompting viewers to reconsider their social roles at the local and global levels. The perceived authority of language is the subject of Us, We, Them (2015), a neon sculpture that questions declarations of affiliation, locality, and identity. A Children’s History of Invisibility (2017) highlights topics often overlooked by society, creating an A-to-Z index of under-known histories. Overlooked figures are also brought forward in a series of collaged portraits, including 19th-century Korean empress Queen Min (2016–17), 20th-century musical innovator Butch Morris (2015–16), and Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay (2015–16). Their biographies remain largely unknown, yet their cultural influence has been broad and complex.
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Thomas Dolby: An Evening of Music and Storytelling
Wednesday, August 8th • 8:30pm
Center Stage
700 North Calvert Street : 21202
Thomas Dolby deconstructs some of his best-known songs—including “She Blinded Me with Science”—telling the story behind their creation. As an early MTV icon, Thomas blazed a trail for electronic music. His music has appeared on recordings of Foreigner, Def Leppard, George Clinton, and Joni Mitchell, earning five Grammy nominations, and he’s performed with Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, David Bowie, and Roger Waters. Thomas is a professor of the arts at JHU and recently released his first book, The Speed of Sound. Learn more. Tickets: $45
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ILLUMINATED: A Surrealist Garden Party
Thursday, August 9th • 7:24pm
Historic Garden at the Peale
225 North Holliday Street : 21202
You are coridally invited to attend
ILLUMINATED
(a surrealist garden party)
In the Historic Garden at the Peale
Starting promptly at 19:24 nightly
Thursday – Saturday evenings
August 9 – 25, 2018
Amusements, delights, and wonders will be provided. Reveries should be expected.
Surrealist attire strongly encouraged. Realist attire will be frowned upon.
Featuring fantastic feats from a rotating cast of curious characters.
Light snacks and a champagne toast at dusk is included in admission.
Guests with mustaches (real or fake) will receive a special gift.
Recommended for all children over the age of 21.
Limited to 30 guests. Admission: $11 – $55, sliding scale, with limited quantities of each ticket available. Goldfish may attend free of charge.
Upon the occasion of rain, snow or locusts, festivities will be relocated indoors.
This event is being presented in conjunction with the grand opening of the new Pollinator Garden at the Peale, as well as the museum’s annual Founders Day events on August 15th. More info at www.thepealecenter.org
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Pangelica Debut Album Release Party
Thursday, August 9th • 10pm
Diskobar
911 North Charles Street : 21218
Pangelica announces the release party for her debut album, Saturn Returns. The party will take place 10pm, August 9th at Diskobar (911 N Charles St.) with the support of Baltimore’s legendary club music virtuoso Blaqstarr and a performance by shamanistic trap ballad rapper Kemet Dank.
Saturn Returns, released by Devine Records, is a concept album that chronicles the adventures of a curious cosmic being lured to a new world, Earth. A galactic coming of age story, Saturn Returns is new and yet nostalgic. It is a journey through the sonically stacked mind of Pangelica.
Pangelica is a sound artist and curator based in Baltimore, MD. She is part of the creative collective GRL PWR which curates events centered around queer, trans, gender nonconforming, women, and poc artists. Her sound art has been featured in exhibitions at Platform Gallery (Baltimore, MD), Museum of Contemporary Diasporan Art (Brooklyn, NYC), The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), and New Image Art Gallery (West Hollywood, CA). She also has produced music for Abdu Ali, Chemise Cagoule, and multi-disciplinary artist Theresa Chromati.
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Counterweight | Opening Reception
Friday, August 10th • 7-10pm
The Menial Collection
243 West Read Street : 21201
The history of civilization is not concrete. Those with power retroactively construct it as they erect structures in their own names. The perfection of concrete as a building material by the Romans allowed physical manifestations of imperial power to proliferate rapidly across the Mediterranean Empire. This legacy of heroic architecture, phallic warrior monuments, and patriarchal power flows from the ancients and into the governments that followed and drew influence from them, down into our contemporary existence. Echoes can be heard in conversations around Confederate war monuments built in the name of their “Lost Cause”— a retroactive attempt to both mythologize and concretize a false narrative of history and to silence dissenting voices.
In Counterweight, Sera Boeno, Cevahir Özdoğan, and Noa Heyne explore the historical power invested in concrete and draw connections to the architectural and sociological conditions of their birthplaces, Turkey and Israel. Understanding the material as inherently gendered, the artists construct works that question the relationship between history, monumentality, power, and the feminine experience. If concrete has often functioned as a vehicle through which power itself is cemented, how can its power be appropriated by the feminine?The exhibition will run from August 10–September 12 at the Menial Collection with an opening reception the evening of August 10th. Accompanying the exhibition will be a programming series with talks by the artists, a printmaking/archiving workshop with Lebanese archivist and artist Celia Shaheenon on September 9th, and an exhibition catalogue release on September 21st.
Counterweight is curated by Maria Emilia Duno, Joshua Gamma, and Hayden Right, with support from the MICA Curatorial Practice MFA program under the direction of José Ruiz, Director of Curatorial Practice.
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♥ SENTIMENTS BOOK LAUNCH: BALTIMORE ♥
Saturday, August 11th, 3pm – 7pm @ Press Press (427 N Eutaw St)
Press Press is proud to launch our newest publication, “Sentiments: Expressions of Cultural Passage,” a compilation of conversations, workshops, artist projects, and writings exploring cultural passage, immigrant identity, and notions of sanctuary, with a series of public programs taking place in 2018. We hope you can join us for the Baltimore release event on Saturday, August 11th, from 3pm – 7pm at our storefront studio! This is a POT LUCK, feel free to bring something to share 🙂
Featuring readings on sanctuary @ 5pm by Bilphena Yahwon, Rami Karim, and more TBA. We’ll also host a reading of our “Manifesto for Sanctuary-Building & Sanctuary-Keeping.” More details on the project are below.
♥ SEE YOU THERE ♥
About “Sentiments: Expressions of Cultural Passage”
Sentiments is a compilation of the sensitivities, hacks, gestures, and actions that we, as immigrants, have used to nourish and preserve ourselves, our families, and our communities. Sentiments provides a first-person documentation of the various intersections of immigrant identities and the multiple and complicated facets of immigrant experiences. This series explores how the lived experiences of those who are called immigrants in the United States can inform our understanding of how white supremacy has constructed society—and how we can dismantle it.
Sentiments was edited by Kimi Hanauer, and mobilized by Valentina Cabezas, Kimi Hanauer, Bomin Jeon, & Bilphena Yahwon, in collaboration with project contributors and community members. Sentiments features the voices of Andrea Arrubla, Ladin Awad, Harris Bauer, Mina Cheon, Lizania Cruz, Filimon Fishaye, Salam Gebremichael, Kearra Amaya Gopee, Bomin Jeon, Rami Karim, Joseph Lee, Mei Lum, Adriana Yvette Monsalve, AbdulAzeem Omotosho, Rosemary Reyes, Dafna Rehavia, Sheida Soleimani, Luwam Teweldebirhan, Bilphena Yahwon, Kuemeran Yun, Lu Zhang, Umico, and many others who participated in producing The Manifesto for Sanctuary-Building & Sanctuary-Keeping, a collaborative manifesto centering on the theme of sanctuary.
This is event is part of a series of public programs taking place at Pioneer Works (NY) as part of Press Play, at Press Press’s Storefront Studio (MD), and at MoMA PS1 (NY) as part of Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair.
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The Eventualities Come-Solo exhibition by KT Duffy | Opening Reception
Saturday, August 11th • 7-10pm
Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street : 21201
“The Eventualities Come” opens August 11th from 7-10PM and is open every Saturday, with a closing reception Thursday, September 20th 7-9PM.
This exhibition also marks Terrault’s 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!
KT Duffy creates carnal and colorful transmedia mashups that protrude outside of easy definition and circle cheekily around deep issues of humanity. Duffy’s interest in emerging technologies and their relationship to the evolution of the human animal is what drives their practice. The Eventualities Come explores the ever narrowing gap between the Digital and the Physical, which they approach as binaries akin to Male and Female. Leveraging the undefined areas between these binaries, Duffy links binary constructions into new semi-organic forms, where no entity is bound to a singular reality, substance, or expression. The artist generates a variety of digital and physical forms that arise from digital fabrication, code, and video-based moving images. These snippets are then combined into more complex mashups which utilize the logic breakdowns or “glitches” that occur when joining conflicting frameworks.
Drawing from an expansive and obsessively created “library” of code snippets and CAD (Computer-aided Design)/CAM (Computer-aided manufacturing) forms, Duffy creates pieces that evolve and inherit attributes from each other. These entities navigate fleshy terrain, as singular organisms or part of a larger gaggle of “lumpy friends”, producing 3D abstractions which serve to challenge the notion that there is any right way to exist in a body.
KT Duffy (b. 1987) is a new media artist and educator from Chicago, IL. They received their MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014, where they subsequently taught for two years. Their work has most recently been shown in a two person exhibition at the South Bend Museum of Art and solo exhibition corresponding with their residency as PIXELFACE (collaboration with Ali Seradge) at LoRez Brewery in Chicago. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Technology at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL.
*The title for the exhibition comes from the poem, (untitled), by CHEKWUBE DANLADI, whom KT Duffy recently collaborated with, kicking off a series of ongoing works, during their residency at the Vermont Studio Center, summer 2018.
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Hummingbirds in The Trenches Official Book Release by Kondwani Fidel
Sun, August 12, 2018: 7–10
Arena Players Inc
801 McCulloh Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
If you are a fan of young author and poet Kondwani Fidel and his work, you definitely do not want to miss this event where he debuts his third book, Hummingbirds in The Trenches. Hummingbirds in The Trenches is a collection of essays and poems that explore oppressive educational systems, police brutality, violence, and mental health issues: things that are commonplace for poor black people in Baltimore, and throughout America.
There will be live spoken word and musical performances by Kondwani Fidel and friends. Performing artists include: The Kooz, Akilah Divine, HLVII Kira, Eddie Vanz and Black Assett.
Autographed copies of the new book and dope vendors will be available | Food and drinks for puchase at venue.
Doors open at 6:00pm. Show will start promptly at 7:15pm.
#HummingbirdsInTheTrenches
#READ
