Hank Willis Thomas has long illuminated the histories of racialized labor, Black cultural economies, politically crafted imagery, and their cumulative roads to revolution. His keen examinations of political gesture are steadily outgrowing their categorization as visual art and becoming increasingly discursive projects rooted in actualization. On the heels of his recent exhibition at Savannah College of Art and Design, Willis Thomas offers new avenues for[…..]

From our sister publication Art Practical, today we bring you Deena Chalabi’s article in issue 8.3: Art Can’t Do Anything If We Don’t. This issue explores the role of art in times of crisis, and how it both succeeds and fails as a call to action and political tool. Chalabi states, “Art offers alternatives to ideas and images prepackaged for us by politicians or corporations (rarely are we[…..]

From Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Jewish Museum explores Marianne Hirsch’s work on “postmemory,” which posits that even without direct experience, we identify so strongly with some historic events and ancestral stories that we take them as our own. Hirsch’s work and the exhibition examine the role of imagination within memory and the way that it shapes contemporary identity.[…..]

Today we bring you an excerpt from Art Practical’s Printed Matters column. Roula Seikaly reviews Question Bridge: Black Males in America, the published companion to a project, platform, and installation that regards identity and representation. Seikaly notes, “Asking a question […] can be difficult; it can imply lack of knowledge and experience, rendering the asker vulnerable. No one wants to be caught out, least of all when the questions address identity, community, and most urgently,[…..]

Today, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we bring you Catherine Wagley’s review of the exhibition After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy. Following the author’s analysis of generational differences in attitudes towards protesting, it’s clear that although the featured artists came of age in a world devoid of Dr. King, the impact of his life’s work nonetheless resounded powerfully. This article[…..]

From October 8th, 2010 through January 23rd 2011, The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina, presents an exhibition by two creative duos of mother and son artists entitled Progeny Two: Deb Willis and Hank Willis Thomas and Fo Wilson and Dayo. This exhibition is an exploration of the creative process per se and the context of social and[…..]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley The Pew Research Center caused a stir this week when it released a study portraying The Millennials, those who came of age during the first decade of the 21st Century, as the most even-tempered generation in recent history. Unlike the Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers, The Millennials have sidestepped almost all reactionary[…..]