Exhibition Runs: August 8 – September 14, 2024
Reception & Artist Talks: Saturday August 24, 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Artist Talks
We invite you to join us for an exhibition reception and artist talks at Harwood Art Center by the artists of Southwest Black Arts Collective on Saturday, August 24, 2024 with artist talks starting at 5:00pm. This event is free and open to all ages.
Gallery Hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 10am-3pm
(be)loved
In a world marked by division, injustice, inequities, and pain, how do we embrace the (BE)LOVED? Centered in the experiences of the artists as people of African heritage, this exhibition explores how (BE)LOVED exists within and extends beyond the personal realm. Using diverse mediums, the works unearth the multifaceted dimensions of “beloved”— the abiding feelings, attachments, connections, and entanglements we have with individuals and families, places and spaces, and memories (real or imagined). They invite you to consider how they shape our lives and the world around us. The featured artists are kelechi agwuncha, Alanna Airitam, Elizabeth Burden, Lizz Denneau, Amber Doe, bianca gabrielle goyette and Phoenix Savage.
About Southwest Black Arts Collective
The Southwest Black Arts Collective is creating connective and representative spaces for both emerging and established Black artists. Through diverse artistic practices, its members engage a myriad of themes, from cultural identity and heritage to the interplay between tangible and abstract elements in art. The collective illuminates the richness and complexity of Black artistic expression. Addressing the often solitary nature of art-making, the collective focuses on networking, collaborating on art creation, resource sharing, and co-curating exhibitions and public programming to connect with audiences in the Southwest and beyond.
kelechi agwuncha
they / them
kelechi.a@outlook.com
IG: @one800lifealert
kelechi agwuncha is an Igbo-American multimedia artist who reanimates archival material, self-documentation, and moving images by using percussive force as connective tissue. As a former athlete, their work also explores athletic gestures & spatialities as a rehearsal of play. Their approach to visual media & soundmaking often prioritizes live manipulations of the image and incorporates outdoor, public sites and the people occupying that site directly into the work in real-time. This practice reaches into our inextricable relationship to our environments and memories, so as to attune us to each other and create a new set of possible relations. They often use drum machines, 35 mm slide projectors, and various 1990s Panasonic video mixers to contemplate the image. kelechi has done live audio-visual performances through spaces including the Chicago Architectural Biennial, Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe Noise Ordinance, and Black Harvest Film Festival.
ALANNA AIRITAM
she/her
alanna@alannaairitam.com
IG: @alannaairitam
ALANNA AIRITAM is a self-taught photo-based conceptual artist based in Tucson, Arizona, known for pushing the boundaries of traditional photography by incorporating materials such as metal, resin, varnish, and gold into her work. Inspired by the lighting of 17th-century paintings and the legacy of early Black studio photography. Her practice is based in the understanding that we must understand where we’ve come from to know where we are going and to be able to appreciate when we arrive. Airitam’s work has been exhibited and collected by prestigious institutions like the Center for Creative Photography, New Orleans Museum of Art, RISD Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. Airitam’s accolades include the 2020 San Diego Art Prize, the Michael Reichman Project Grant Award, and the 2023 Project Mesquite: New Works Grant. Committed to empowering emerging artists of color, she served on the boards of Medium Photo and Oakwood Arts, co-founded the Southwest Black Arts Collective, and is co-founder of The Projects, an experimental art space. Additionally, she mentors undergrad and grad students through the MFA Homecoming Program and supports emerging artists from low economic backgrounds in finding their voices and opportunities in the art world.
Elizabeth Burden
she/ her
liz@elizabethburden.com
IG: @burdenelizabeth
ELIZABETH BURDEN is a multidisciplinary artist blending studio work with social practice. She uses drawing, painting, video, sound, and other media in a process of artistic archivy to reflect on geographies, imaginaries, legacies, and vestiges of the future/past/present. She is intrigued by the pull of archives, the construction of histories, ephemeral inheritances, the role of memory and narrative, and the ways we make sense of it all. She seeks to create spaces of/for critical thinking, critical feeling, and critical reflection that lead to a re-imagining of possibilities.
She is one of the co-founders of the Southwest Black Arts Collective and of The Projects (Tucson, AZ). She has been an artist-in-residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA (2023), the Santa Fe Arts Institute (Revolution Residency, 2022; Truth and Reconciliation Residency, 2019), and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Trainings for the Not Yet, 2019). She was a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellow (Arizona State University, 2020).
Lizz Denneau
she/her
info@lizzdenneau.com
IG: @lizz_denneau
LIZZ DENNEAU is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and art educator residing in the Sonoran Southwest. She obtained her teaching certificate and BFA in Art and Visual Culture Education through the University of Arizona and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a member of the Art21 Educators Institute and works with local community organizers, cultural workers, and colleges to develop practical models of social justice in art education. Her artistic practice involves ornate works that configure themselves into maximalist installations guided by her research into historical systems connected to respectability politics, its adjacency to White Supremacy and capitalism, and the duality of its effectiveness in the survival or dismantling of a people. She is the recipient of the 2024 WESTAF Bipoc Artist Award, MOCA Tucson Nightbloom Artist Grant, and the Arts Foundation of Southern Arizona’s 2024 stART: New Works Grant. She co-founded the Southwest Black Artists Collective and The Projects- art space located in Tucson, AZ. Both organizations serve a mission to bring visibility and support to Black creatives in the Southwest region.
Amber Doe
she/her
amberdoestudio.com/
@amberdoestudio
AMBER DOE is a multimedia artist who uses sculpture and performance to bear witness to the experiences of black women even as American society aims to render us and our lives as invisible and meaningless. Despite the prevalent “urban black” narrative, her experience is tied to the natural world, and Doe uses materials that reference her desert environment and lived experience as a black woman with Indigenous roots. All of her work is trans species ancestor worship.
Amber Doe (b. Washington DC) currently lives and works in Tucson, AZ. She holds a BFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a recipient of the 2023 Night Bloom Grant via MOCA Tucson and the Warhol Foundation. The Arizona Commission on the Arts Research and Development Grant, 2023 Projecting All Voices ASU and Mellon Foundation Fellowship, and the 2021 Abbey Awards Fellowship. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, The LeRoy Neiman Art Gallery, and Untitled Gallery, New York, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids Gabriel Rolt Gallery, Amsterdam, La Ira de Dios, Buenos Aires, UNREPD Gallery, Los Angeles, Pidgin Palace and Snakebite Gallery, Tucson.
bianca gabrielle goyette
IG: @bgoesrogue
bianca gabrielle goyette is a visual and performing artist based in Angel Fire, NM.
She is a papermaker, a vocalist, a photographer working in still and moving pictures, a sculptor, and a writer. She uses overlapping words and imagery to erode the distance between the real and the imaginary, working with materials and processes that speak to the strength and fragility of the human condition. Her work focuses on the radical racial tradition and social issues centered around communication, language, and community (or the lack thereof).
bianca holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Parsons School of Design. She has exhibited her work in Chicago, New York, and New Mexico, released three studio albums and six singles, and toured the United States. bianca is also a creative director and copywriter specializing in the fabrication of digital assets and experiences that shift how we interact with and perceive the world.
Phoenix Savage
she/her, them /they
@phoenix.savage
PHOENIX SAVAGE is a Medical Anthropologist with an MFA in Sculpture. She engages in a research-based studio practice, creating objects and installations designed to evoke haptic experiences, seeking interactive viewer engagements. Each works of art are an invitation of exploration into the space between tangible and ethereal realms of existence.