"The Ripening" Opening at Pen + Brush
Pen + Brush is pleased to present our first exhibition of 2023, The Ripening curated by Parker Daley Garcia with Birdie Piccininni, opening February 16th and open to the public through April 15th. Loosely based on Édouard Glissant’s book of the same name, The Ripening puts forth a shared process, where trauma, fluidity, and choice intersect, as a way of exploring the state of identity, specifically, gendered (or lack thereof) identity today. Register here.
Artist Talk and Short Film Screening: Jovan C. Speller
MAEP Artist Jovan C. Speller in conversation with Gabrielle E. W. Carter, multi-disciplinary artist and cultural preservationist, and moderated by author Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara as they discuss Speller’s “Nurturing, and Other Rituals of Protection” and screen “The Seeds We Keep,” a short film by Carter. Moving beyond the narrative of a single story of Blackness, they will explore ancestral legacy and creating spaces of respite, safety, and passing on traditions of care.
Part narrative essay, part documentary, “The Seeds We Keep” lifts up a love song for the land, for generational wisdom and for the vital questions that come with making your place in it. In the film, cultural preservationist Gabrielle E. W. Carter unfolds a lush vision of what is and what could be in her meditation on Black land ownership and seed saving.
Nurturing, and Other Rituals of Protection
Jovan C. Speller’s MAEP exhibition will aestheticize the security of a community too often targeted, misunderstood, and misrepresented in public spaces. From the creation of a sound installation, to scenes of protection across the gallery walls surrounding the viewer, the artist will depict the story of fear and hope for Black families in every American community.
Sounds for Survival
Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation is pleased to present Sounds For Survival, a solo exhibition project by Jovan C. Speller for the Ojai Institute. The exhibition will be on view November 20, 2021 – February 26, 2022. Speller is the recipient of the 2021 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize.
There will be a public reception to celebrate the opening on Saturday, November 20, 2021, from 5-7pm.
ArtiFaCts
Artifacts is an installation for Smallärt Gallery from the artist's recent series entitled Eulogy. This series, which includes photographs, resin encased images and objects, and mixed media works, references cinematic imagery and elements of visual story mapping to document a metamorphosis.
Eulogy questions the role of memory and the transient nature of consciousness, resulting in the documentation of Speller’s notions of reincarnation. The works represented in this series are materializations of distant recollections of a past life - accepting the unreliability of memory itself, and exploring the myths that remain instead. Artifacts represents the memories that remain and the reminance of a life lived.