One work depicts a figure sleeping softly on their side, while another shows a subject bound to a chair with belt-like restraints.
In Paris, Zanele Muholi’s Bronze Sculptures Summon the Stories of Black Queer South Africans
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In Paris, Zanele Muholi’s Bronze Sculptures Summon the Stories of Black Queer South Africans
All images © Zanele Muholi, courtesy of Paris + par Art Basel, shared with permission
South African artist Zanele Muholi (previously) has spent the better part of their career challenging portraiture traditions. Often working with quotidian objects and black-and-white photography, Muholi’s works center themself and Black queer people who have long been omitted from the canon. In recent years, they’ve begun to create bronze sculptures with similar motives, some of which are on view now at The Jardin des Tuileries.
Part of Paris + par Art Basel, Muholi’s The Politics of Black Silhouettes encompasses a series of figurative works positioned alongside statues by art historical greats like Auguste Rodin and Alberto Giacometti. While the previously installed sculptures are often presented on pedestals in stately positions, Muholi’s rest directly on the ground, exploring notions of value and reverence. One work depicts a figure sleeping softly on their side, while another shows a subject bound to a chair with belt-like restraints, their hands and feet anxious to move. The artist’s intent is corrective and “to rewrite a Black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in South Africa and beyond.”
The Politics of Black Silhouettes is on view through October 31. Explore more of Muholi’s works across mediums on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In Paris, Zanele Muholi’s Bronze Sculptures Summon the Stories of Black Queer South Africans appeared first on Colossal.
12 Award-Winning Furniture Designs From the A’ Design Award & Competition
One of our favorite ways to discover emerging designers and their unique ideas is through the A’ Design Award & Competition. Every year, the contest showcases new talents from all over the world, sharing designs we haven’t seen elsewhere. The 2023-2034 edition is currently open for applications, but you’ll have to hurry, as the competition is already in its late application phase. Submissions are accepted until February 28, 2024 and the winners will be announced April 15, 2024.
Unlike other design competitions, the A’ Design Award & Competition has many categories that designers can submit their projects under. There are over 100 categories, including special design categories like the Good Architecture Design Award and the Good Product Design Award. During the judging process, you’ll receive valuable feedback from industry experts and media on your design, whether it’s a concept, prototype, or finished product. The winners receive an extensive prize package, including a unique trophy, inclusion in world design rankings, extensive PR and publicity in design media outlets, and even the option to sell their winning design.
Feeling inspired to enter the competition? The deadline is fast approaching, so be sure to apply today!
Below, we share some of our favorite winning designs from last year in the Furniture Design category, though you can see all the winners here. Check back in April 2024 when we’ll also share the winning designs from this year’s contest!
Friends Sofa by Roberta Rampazzo
Photo: Andrew Castaneda
Resolution Lounge Chair by Shaobo Liu
Photo: Ryoukan Abe
Photo: Yu Ren
Perspective Of Light Multifunctional Side Table by Yu Ren
Photo: Marjan Sabzali
Stoniture Sofa by Abbas Sufi Nejad
Photo: Yu Ren
Pac Man Side Table With Lights by Yu Ren
Photo: Jing Cyuan Tang
Tai Side Table by Sunriu Design
Photo: Tugce Sonmez Evin
Berliner Multifunctional Pouf by Tugce Sonmez Evin
Photo: Elena Prokhorova
Plump Modular Seating by Elena Prokhorova
Photo: MCA Estúdio
Sertao Side Table by Gabriela Campos
Photo: RISD
Seat Urchin Rocking Chair by Yue Zhuo
To learn more about the 2023-2024 competition or the A’ Design Award & competition, visit adesignaward.com.
Sculpture Fest traces its roots to 1976 International Symposium
On October 21, the annual Liberty Hill Sculpture Festival will be held at Lions Foundation Park. It’s a day that will bring back memories for many Liberty Hill natives who
Native perspectives on Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Indigenous Peoples’ Day—celebrated on Oct. 9—is “a day to celebrate who Indigenous people are,” said artist and business-owner Rebecca Kirk (Klamath and Leech Lake Ojibwe). “There was a time when we weren’t able to celebrate or practice our traditional customs, but now we’re able to and that’s a really beautiful thing,” Kirk said.
Kirk—owner of Resting Warrior Face Apparel—creates original artwork, accessories, clothing and handmade jewelry. Kirk was one of many Native vendors who gathered on Oct. 9 to form the Portland Indigenous Marketplace at the Portland State Native American Student and Community Center (PSU-NASCC).
Another vendor present there was Zani Nevayaktewa (Hopi), co-owner of a family-owned business called RRB Native, which sells handmade jewelry and specializes in beadwork, silver and gemstone adornments.
“[Indigenous Peoples’ Day] is very important—especially for my children—because growing up I didn’t get to have very much of that recognition, like seeing that in our schools or in the media,” Nevayaktewa said.
“For me, every day is a Indigenous’ Peoples Day, as weird as that sounds—just because of the nature of the work I do,” said Dr. Kali Simmons (Oglala Lakota), assistant professor of Indigenous Nations studies at PSU. “But it’s nice to have a federally-recognized day that invites people to hopefully educate themselves about Indigenous people more broadly… and to make connections with Indigenous people in their local community, and think about who are the traditional people of the lands that you’re living on.”
The Portland Indigenous Marketplace is one such opportunity for connection. This event is held in various locations around the Portland area and will return to PSU-NASCC on Nov. 24–26.
Lluvia Merello (Quechua, Andean/Inca)is the founder of Portland Indigenous Marketplace. Merello organized this community of Indigenous and Black artisans in order to support “Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs by providing barrier-free, culturally respectful spaces that encourage cultural resilience and economic sustainability.”
The marketplace relies primarily on grants, donations and volunteers to maintain itself. There is no fee for artisans to sell, but vendors must meet two requirements. First, they must offer handmade products. Second, “if you’re making culturally specific items, we really are very specific that you have to be from that culture,” Merello said. “For us it’s important that you know where your Indigeneity comes from.”
“When I went to other events that weren’t culturally specific, I would maybe be the only one of two vendors that were Indigenous or even people of color at events,” Merello said. “It was really a night-and-day experience… when I was having a better time at an event and felt supported and in community.”
Merello began organizing the marketplace in response to a lack of entrepreneurial opportunities for Indigenous communities in Portland. “Before [COVID-19], there were probably 12–14 annual events that local Native artists could count on happening every year… and I was like, ‘That’s not enough…’” Merello said. “Folks really are trying to build a business and they just need more exposure.”
Aside from the marketplace, Portland has other opportunities to engage with Native histories and cultures. For example, PSU-NASCC organizes various festive and educational events every year. As Native American Heritage Month approaches, the PSU Indigenous Nations studies department has collaborated with two local theaters to host Native-centric film screening events. The first of these on Oct. 23 will feature the 2023 historical drama Killers of the Flower Moon, followed by the horror-thriller film Clearcut on Nov. 4.
Additionally, the Center for Native Arts and Culture in Southeast Portland hosts workshops, artist talks and exhibition spaces “to strengthen Native communities and promote positive social change with American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native peoples in the United States,” according to its website.
This center represents one of many instances in which stolen land has been returned to Native ownership, fulfilling the LandBack movement. Initially owned by Yale Union, the $5.36 million building was donated to the Native Arts and Culture Foundation in 2020. This movement is not metaphorical, theoretical or unprecedented.
“It is the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples: land, language, ceremony, food, education, housing, healthcare, governance, medicines, kinship,” the official LandBack manifesto states.
While this type of reconciliation is still hindered by performative land acknowledgments, unfulfilled treaties and hollow apologies, the LandBack movement continues to gain ground. It represents a materialization of support and respect for Native Nations and Native sovereignty.
“If you are a settler and you have large tracts of land—especially if that land is located near traditional food sites, traditional sacred sites, places like that—how can you make those spaces available to the communities who traditionally do ceremonies or collect food or collect medicines there?” Simmons said.
“When we talk about LandBack, the first thing that people think about is ‘my private land’, which we are talking about, but actually the preponderance of public lands are owned by places like the Bureau of Land Management,” Simmons said.
“In Oregon, there’s lots of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management that could perhaps instead be returned to the ownership of tribes so that they could have stewardship over it instead,” Simmons said. “Currently the Pacific Northwest has 16.1 million acres of public lands that are managed by [the Bureau.] And so, hey, let’s start there.”
Here in Portland, many opportunities exist to redistribute resources more equitably to Indigenous communities. For example, at PSU equitable funding does not even reach students who are Native to the land on which the university stands.
“I think every PSU student who is aware of our land acknowledgment and aware that we resided on the traditional homelands of the Chinook people should be supporting the Chinook’s efforts to reclaim their federal recognition status,” Simmons said.
“A significant thing that’s impacting them at PSU is that they don’t qualify for the Oregon Tribal Grant,” Simmons said. “And so even though we’re literally on their homelands, and we’re offering federal benefits to other Indigenous students here, we are not offering federal benefits to them.”
The U.S. as a whole has much work to do in reconciling the long histories of violence against Indigenous peoples of this land. Settler colonialism imposes even on Indigenous Peoples’ Day itself, considering it is still recognized by many states and on the federal level as Columbus day.
“I feel like there are better Italian American heroes that we could have a day [named] after than Christopher Columbus—who not only instituted a regime of genocidal violence that this continent hadn’t seen before, but that also was deeply involved in the slave trade,” Simmons said. “I also think about this as a day of solidarity too between Indigenous peoples across the globe. There are Indigenous peoples currently engaged in collective struggles for sovereignty across the world, and these problems share an origin. And we have to remember there are Afro-Indigenous people domestically and globally. The Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day dynamic invites us to think about how these anti-colonial struggles are interconnected.”
“There is such an overrepresentation of a lot of western heroes,” Simmons said. “There isn’t a lot of mainstream representation of prominent Native people that did cool stuff. Like, you could probably rattle off a list of 50 famous white, Euro-American men. And then when it came to listing prominent Indigenous people, that would be a harder list for people to compose.”
“Equity can feel like discrimination for some people, when we’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s level the playing field and give equal representation to different communities,’” Simmons said.
“There is a long, beautiful history before Columbus or colonizers, and when we don’t include that history we’re totally erasing it,” Merello said. “We’re saying history started 500 years ago. That’s not even right.”
Settlers educating themselves about the histories and present realities of Native Nations is necessary for their proper recognition and acknowledgment. Unfortunately, mainstream education and media institutions across the U.S. largely fail to center Native perspectives to adequate degrees.
Simmons teaches a class called Intro to Native Studies. This class addresses the histories of Native Nations specific to Oregon and their forced removals, the current legal statuses of Tribal Nations and reservation lands and the abuse and murder of Native children in federally-mandated boarding schools.
Simmons conducts polls to gauge if the course content is new or familiar to students. “A lot of students reported that all of the content that I bring week to week is brand new,” Simmons said. “And that has been my experience as long as I’ve been teaching this class.”
“So there’s definitely more that can be done to integrate a really honest engagement with the history of colonization in education,” Simmons said. “Because I think a lot about like, ‘When will I stop experiencing this?’ When will I come into class and I’ll have these first three lectures and most students will be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I know all this stuff. I learned it in high school. I learned it in middle school. I learned it in elementary school…’ What would the world look like if that started to happen? Would other policies change?”
Native Americans should not have to shoulder the burden of curing non-natives’ ignorance either. “I was always called out in school for being the only Native in the classroom, and having [this] expectation from my teacher and others,” Nevayaktewa said. “That because I’m Native I know everything about all Native cultures—which is never true, because I only knew about my own tribe, and that was it. So I feel like definitely reading up on Indigenous cultures—especially in whatever state or region you’re in—learning about those local tribes [is important].”
There are many ways to celebrate and honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Education is undoubtedly the foundation for progress, but a partially recognized holiday must materialize as more than a gesture to truly decolonize this land.
Native photographers tell their own stories in major Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibition
Jaida Grey Eagle grew up around photojournalists. They showed up regularly to report on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where she lived until she was 5 and where she returned each summer for ceremony and community.
They looked at her. But they never looked like her.
When she expressed interest in becoming a photographer, older people talked her out of it. “They were like, ‘You can’t do photography,'” said Grey Eagle, 35, who is Oglala Lakota. “‘That’s a job for white dudes.'”
But she did it anyway, becoming a documentary and editorial photographer whose work has appeared in the New York Times.
Now, Grey Eagle is co-curating a major photography exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art that uses more than 150 images, taken with cameras ranging from snapshot to state-of-the-art, to spotlight how generations of Indigenous photographers and photojournalists have not only participated in the medium but pushed it forward.
Within “In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now,” which opens Oct. 21, Native American, First Nations, Métis and Inuit photographers capture distinct geographies and histories and legacies. Mothers and potters and protesters.
“It feels like a new thing that editors and institutions are starting to give more faith back to the community,” Grey Eagle said, “acknowledging that they are very capable of telling their own stories.”
The show is organized by theme rather than chronology, with historic black-and-white photographs beside crisp contemporary images.
“It’s not laid out in this clinical museum timeline,” she said. “It’s a lot dreamier than that.”
The show builds off the encyclopedic museum’s “Hearts of Our People,” a 2019 exhibition that gathered and contextualized a thousand years of art made by Native American women. To create that show — praised as “bold,” “groundbreaking” and “once-in-a-generation” — the Minneapolis Institute of Art tried something new, working with an all-female, mostly Native advisory panel of 21 artists and experts on themes, texts and more.
“In Our Hands” takes that collective process a step further.
A curatorial council of 14 advisers, including Native artists and academics based in Canada and the United States, selected the show’s photographic images and objects, drawing on their diverse specialties and connections.
They first met during the pandemic via Zoom.
Quickly, it became clear that “we were not the first,” said Casey Riley, the show’s co-curator and the museum’s curator of photography and new media. “While the work that we were collectively doing at Mia was valuable, it was building on the work of many Indigenous scholars and artists. …
“There was this thriving, parallel ecosystem of photographic history that none of our educations had adequately addressed.”
That history includes B.A. Haldane, a proud Tsimshian, whose sepia self-portrait, taken around 1920, anchors the hefty exhibition catalog. Haldane sits in the image’s center surrounded by photo equipment, including a Kodak Brownie camera. Suited and stern, he looks into the lens as he leans on a model totem pole carved with his wolf clan crest.
“There has been a history of extraction on the part of non-Native photographers in relating to Native people,” Riley said. “But Native people aren’t passive actors outside of time, outside of technology.
“What the show makes clear … is that Indigenous people have been working with the medium since its inception.”
As part of the curatorial council, Rosalie Favell, a Métis artist of Cree and English ancestry, discovered historical work she hadn’t seen before, including some by Métis photojournalists. Growing up in Winnipeg, Favell first encountered photography via family snapshots, albums and slideshows. That “set the stage for my love of looking,” Favell writes in an essay included in the exhibition catalog.
With her work, she’s mined those family photos “for clues to who I was,” she said by phone, situating herself in the Métis people’s complex history.
She toyed with photographs of her grandmother, situating one atop a postcard of Winnipeg’s Main Street. She toyed with snapshots of herself, including one from her first day of kindergarten, scrawling across it in red ink: “my first day of assimulation.”
After her work was included in “Hearts of Our People,” Favell became “somewhat of a groupie,” seeing the exhibition in other venues, including the Frist Art Museum in Nashville. That show’s co-curator, Jill Ahlberg Yohe, the institute’s associate curator of Native American art, asked Favell to be a part of “In Our Hands.”
Favell, 65, had never before encountered a major museum exhibition organized so collectively, so transparently, so accountably.
“So often, in larger institutions, curators are made to be invisible,” she said.
Having a council gives the show a broader knowledge base and awareness of artists, Favell said, which leads to a better show.
“We’re all so different,” she said. “We’re not just one Indigenous people. We’re many, many.”
A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts, Grey Eagle was new to her role as the museum’s Shakopee Mdewakanton Fellow when she and the women who would become her co-curators began discussing a photo project.
But she had seen “Hearts of Our People” — again and again.
“I ended up coming three or four times,” Grey Eagle said during an interview inside Mia’s photo study room. She and a friend pitched in to buy a catalog, and she learned how the show was “created in community.”
When she learned that Mia hoped to root this show in a similar process, she thought, “OK, that feels so good to me.”
Imagining young Native artists, people like her younger self, encountering “In Our Hands,” Grey Eagle began to cry. “I don’t want to get emotional,” she said. But her eyes filled with tears. Her hands trembled.
For those Native kids who love photography to “know they have a rich and deep history within it” is important, she added later, “because when I was a kid in school here in Minnesota, I so often felt erased from most histories.
“I just hope this helps not only Native kids but people in general to appreciate the dedication and contributions of Native photographers to the medium.”
From Rookie to MVP: The story behind Olson Photography
Jim Olson was at a crossroads. It was 1987, and he and wife Susan’s first son was due in June. The future Nokesville residents had been transferred to Dulles from Memphis.
“I had the airline job I always wanted, but it had been seven tough years working the ticket counter and gates,” Jim, a Minnesota native, said. “I wanted to be around for my kids, and I knew the airline hours would make that hard.”
He considered starting different businesses, anything that would replace his airline salary and afford them flexibility.
“I saw a magazine ad offering youth sports photography in another city, and that seemed interesting.” Jim liked photography but had no experience outside one semester of photography class in school.
Nonetheless, he founded Olson Photography in March 1987, months before the couple’s first son was born.
“The driving force was not missing our kids growing up – it could have been a car wash or really any type of business!” he laughed.
Jim stayed with his airline position until July of that year while Susan kept her job.
“Here we were, having our first baby, and I announced to my father-in-law, a successful football coach and businessman, that I was quitting my job to start a business. Initially, it didn’t go over so well!” Jim said. “The pressure of a new baby and a new business was a lot to take on. But sometimes when your back is against the wall, that is when you do your best,” he said.
“When you start a business, you wonder – will the phone ever ring?” Jim said. “The first call I got was from a travel soccer team in Sterling with 15 players. I was so excited, I put a suit on to hand deliver the order envelopes. I took those team pictures, and that is how it all began!”
Launching a business comes with challenges, and Jim recalls one that still makes him smile.
“Early on, I head out to Chantilly Youth Association (CYA) softball, where there are 15-20 teams,” Jim recalls. “At this point, I have one set of equipment. Everything is going well, until part way through the shoot when my camera stopped working. I told them I needed to get my other camera – but I didn’t have another camera!
“I drove to Fair Oaks Mall to buy a new camera that I couldn’t afford. Thankfully, they were able to adjust my battery and my camera worked! I still do CYA’s pictures today, so they cut me some slack.”
For the first five years, Olson Photography used an outside photo processing lab in Pennsylvania to fulfill orders.
“Honesty and integrity are very important to me,” Jim said. “I promised a three-week delivery to my leagues. Sometimes our order wouldn’t be ready, and that wasn’t good enough for me.”
The lab was over three hours away, and Jim would drive to pick up the pictures on Friday so he could deliver by Saturday’s deadline. So, in 1992, he took a chance and invested $100,000 to open his own lab.
“It turned out to be the best thing – but at the time it was a scary step,” he said. “I didn’t have a background in photo finishing or running a lab. I was renting office space and had one full-time employee, and we had to learn how to work the machine and manage a fair amount of volume during the season.”
Jim states the biggest challenge is replenishing the photography staff due to the part-time, seasonal nature of the jobs.
“Employees are definitely the most important part of any business; we could not have grown without the many exceptional people working with us over the years,” Jim said. “They are the backbone and we have been blessed to work with many quality individuals.”
Reflecting, Jim adds, “I see us providing memories and products for families to cherish for a lifetime. It’s very humbling and rewarding. They will have our photos for the rest of their lives – what an honor to be part of that. We are grateful for the continued support from so many youth sports organizations in our community and from the parents that make our success possible.”
Thirty-nine years, three adult children and two grandkids, three full-time employees (one of which is their eldest son, John), and a lifetime of family and photographic memories later, and Jim is humbled and thankful.
“I love every minute of it – I never missed a practice or game with my own kids, and during our season I now write over sixty paychecks! It’s amazing what has happened since 1987.”
And his father-in-law?
“He was not good at handing out compliments, but he eventually came around, and said I was the most successful person he knew!”
This feature appeared in the October 2023 issue of Haymarket-Gainesville Lifestyle Magazine. You can read the entire issue here and pick up copies at these locations.
Yellow Leaf Arts Festival in St. Francisville celebrates 20 years with more art and music
For 20 years, the Yellow Leaf Arts Festival in St. Francisville has been a fall art event not to be missed. Set for Oct. 28-29 this year, the event began
11,000-year-old statue of man clutching penis excavated
Science News: Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered ancient statues, dating back 11,000 years, that challenge our understanding of pre-agricultural communities.
The Messy Energy of Turning Life into Art
The veteran performance artist Barbara T. Smith has a sweeping show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
