 | | The mural, "Hearts of Our People" on the facade of All My Relations gallery in Minneapolis created by Natchez Beaulieu with a team of young female artists.Jaida Grey Eagle for The New York Times |
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'It's Almost Like a Sacred Space' |
This excerpted article is part of our latest Fine Arts & Exhibits special report, about how art institutions are helping audiences discover new options for the future. |
On a yellow brick building in Minneapolis, a mural of a woman with two braids that cascade into waterfalls and lips muzzled by a red handprint watches over Franklin Avenue. |
Above the handprint — a symbol of solidarity for missing and murdered Indigenous women — the figure's sunglasses reflect a cityscape and tepee. |
The reflection represents the American Indian Community Blueprint, the 2010 document that provides a framework for Native urban community development, and the American Indian Cultural Corridor along Franklin Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood just south of downtown. |
At the corridor's heart is the yellow brick building, which houses the institute, as well as its community assets: the Four Sisters Farmers Market, Pow Wow Grounds coffeehouse and All My Relations Arts, an organization and exhibition gallery dedicated to increasing the visibility of contemporary Native artists, cultivating Native curators and connecting them to the influence of preceding generations. |
This year, All My Relations Arts celebrates 10 years in this location, and about two decades of operation. It has become a point of pride, said Angela Two Stars, the organization's director. |
"A lot of the artwork that we display is from a native perspective, and that's a different narrative than what we've been taught, you know, as American history," Ms. Two Stars said. |
Mr. Lilligren said the gallery "immediately became a center of attention, both in the community and the broader arts world." |
"It's almost like sacred space," he said. |
 | | Angela Two Stars and Robert Lilligren at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis, Minn.Jaida Grey Eagle for The New York Times |
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All My Relations is a direct outcome of the blueprint, which outlined the corridor as a destination for Native American art, culture and food, citing examples such as New York's Little Italy and San Francisco's Chinatown. |
Marked by orange lamppost banners, turtle imprints on sidewalks, and a number of murals, the eight-block corridor is bookended by the Ancient Traders Market and the Little Earth affordable housing complex, which became famous as a home base for the American Indian Movement. Formed in the aftermath of the 1956 Indian Relocation Act, the movement went on to organize the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties, a protest walk from the West Coast to Washington, D.C., to demand that the Nixon Administration honor its treaty commitments. |
The Relocation Act forced many Native Americans to assimilate into urban areas, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, which has one of the largest concentrations of urban Native Americans in the nation. |
"The American Indian Movement was founded here in 1968. I mean, literally here, you know, in the footprint of the American Indian Cultural Corridor," said Mr. Lilligren, who served as the first Native American member of the Minneapolis City Council from 2001 to 2014. |
Read the rest of the article here. |
 | | The full works of Deana Lawson will be showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. "Nation" (2018) is one of the intimate photographic portraits in the collection.Deana Lawson, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; and David Kordansky, Los Angeles |
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Photography That Focuses on Those Who Are Often Not Seen |
This excerpted article is part of our latest Fine Arts & Exhibits special report, about how art institutions are helping audiences discover new options for the future. |
During the pandemic, Isolde Brielmaier, curator at large at the International Center of Photography, began wondering how Black photographers were navigating that crisis — particularly as the battle for racial justice heightened after the murder of George Floyd and the 2020 presidential race played out. |
So she picked five emerging photographers, all of whom live in the United States, who she said are "representative of a generation coming up today.'' The result is "Inward: Reflections on Interiority," an exhibition of 47 images that draws on the genres of self portraiture. |
Included in the exhibition are works by Djeneba Aduayom, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Quil Lemons, Brad Ogbonna and Isaac West that go "beyond simply documenting the world in which they moved," Ms. Brielmaier said. "This is a generation who has a certain sense of freedom to work across what used to be fairly firm boundaries." |
The photographers were directed to use their smartphones — "their image-making tool," she said — and turn the lens on themselves. "And they are sharing images that reflect their interior lives," Ms. Brielmaier said. |
The show at the International Center of Photography on Manhattan's Lower East Side, which runs until Jan. 10, is one of many across the United States that is spotlighting the work of Black photographers, as well as artists from other racial and ethnic groups. |
Museums and galleries in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Boston, New York and Richmond, Va., among others, have been featuring works that show the range of art being created by once-marginalized artists, and provide insights into their outer worlds and individual perspectives. |
The works cover a variety of styles and focus, including portraiture, conceptual pieces and fashion photography. The artists are both newcomers and others who already are established in the photography world. |
 | | "Untitled, from IN LOVE," 2021," by Isaac West, one of the five photographers showcased in the International Center of Photography exhibition.Isaac West |
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For Mr. West, who has shot for Vogue Italy and is one of the "Inward" artists, the camera has allowed him to express himself, he said. Initially interested in creative direction, he had taken a few photography courses but turned to others for shoots. |
"If I had an idea I would go to a photographer friend and we would bring it to life," he said. But he said he got impatient waiting for others to realize his ideas and began taking pictures himself. |
The exhibition, which runs until Nov. 7, was conceived by Ms. Oliver to explore some of the most turbulent moments of the 20th century, including the assassinations of Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. The works were created by three photographers, Dawoud Bey, Marilyn Nance and Carrie Mae Weems. |
Read the rest of the article here. |
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