Art Exhibitions

Ibou Ndoye is an artist who expresses himself through his paintings and mixing it with the views he sees. He took a step away from the US and went back to his home country to see everything in a different position. His work was titled Neighbors Near and Far because of how he saw the difference in culture and how the woman and men were different with their clothes, jewelry and how the woman had sacred time with other woman and men weren't allowed to join them in their inner circles. When I saw that it really represented a brunch in a sort of say where women all join to have a good time, gossip and without the company of men. The subject in each painting that Ibou has shown is showing the culture, the background of African Americans, the different techniques he uses and different fabrics he uses in each painting. He also likes to draw many faces because the faces are what tell a story about the person and that is something special because it is him telling a story of a young boy or woman. The art he does speaks about him because his cultural background is behind it and it explores the history of the people. In one of his art pieces there was a table full of african women and when seeing this it spoke to me as almost as the last supper in the bible because seeing all these women almost in the same position this was one narrative that conveyed me and Ibou himself brushed upon why he decided to do this particular piece and it was something that he himself witnessed the woman do back in their home country. Another thing that amazes me with his work is that he adds texture, color, fabrics and that caught my eyes because over there probably is a world of vibrant color and that amazes me. 

As for Adebunmi Gbadebo's Uprooted exhibition was certainly a different experience for me. I have never visited an art gallery where hair from men, women and other people can make such a big statement. The artist choice was to use hair, cotton, blue color and more hair to put on a showcase of her ancestors from back in the day when slavery existed. Completely different to Ibou she decided to present history in cooperation with the hair and meaning behind many of them. One thing that caught my attention was dreadlocks and apparently it is named this because of how the owners of the slaves would say their hairs were “dreadful” and that came to the term dreadlocks. The research plays a crucial part because it gives us more insight on how the people were treated back in the day, used to crop the plantations and be sweating and breaking bones just to finish the job. In a way that I see this an activist on part of the artist is where we learned about the Blue Field plantation and converting it to a golf club. When I heard about this I was wondering why would someone make this part of history into a golf club where only elites or people of high status are only allowed? Then my professor talked more of how the powerful people who own the gold club in jersey city are trying to expand on ellis island and make something that is a public piece of history into something closed off from the public. The exhibition itself addresses many social issues, identity and activism because the artist is showcasing a piece of history that is now known today as a golf club. No longer a plantation where people of her history worked and slaved away their lives and to just realize that through hair of her people is completely mind blowing.  that many face today and 

Quotes: 

1. “ instead of thinking of the university as a locus of national policy by which the elite recruits new members, perhaps it might be a place in where people encounter each other”
2. “Freedom was not to be seen either as an absence of constraint or as the self-enabling choice among variables which is presented by american apologists today but as the possibility to play” 
3. “In my latest tents the theme of the loner versus the group, and or the other, comes into a phase in which the interaction, and the expectations that come with it, will be directed even more. This was already at stake in the works where I used a, so called, necessity which you could hardly deny. Here, things are dealing more with emotional issues, with intimacy and distance, with attraction and repulsion, with respect for respect and disrespect. Then again, this is also to blame the lack of power, or independence, of the ordinary public.”