projects+gallery: Friday, 15 March 2018

David Antonio Cruz, NOTSOPRETTYINTHEFACEBUTHEDOESITGOOD, 2018 

Fashioning the Black Body
Curated by Dario Calmese
March 15 – May 4, 2019
Opening Reception Friday, March 15th 5–8 PM

Artist and Curator Talk Saturday, March 16th 11 AM–12:30 PM

Fashioning the Black Body is a new mixed-media exhibition organized by Dario Calmese. On view from March 15 through May 4, 2019, this project surveys how fashion, style, and the garment act as devices of investigative storytelling. Featured artists include Bisa Butler, Soly Cissé, Renee Cox, David Antonio Cruz, Kenturah Davis, Hassan Hajjaj, Basil Kincaid, Mario Moore, Chris Ofili, Fahamu Pecou, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Jacolby Satterwhite, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.

As a form of identification, self-actualization, and agency, the select artists engage the fashion object from various points of its ontogeny. In turn, Fashioning the Black Body becomes a dialogue about space: the space between black skin and cloth, the space that exists between the historically commodified and fetishized black body, and the space claimed for one’s self-defined identity. “Far from the reaches of frivolity – a domain to which fashion is usually relegated – Black people have continually engaged the fashion object beyond its utilitarian functions into a device of pride, protection, resistance and camouflage,” states curator Dario Calmese.

Through the work of these artists, the Black body is transubstantiated into a semipermeable membrane between the gaze and the contents it holds – and more concretely – the tenuous distances between who we are, who we want to be, and how we are perceived.

projects+gallery

4733 McPherson Ave

St. Louis, Missouri 63108