ON VIEW in the William D. Ginn Gallery and Dr. Gerald and Phyllis Seltzer Rotunda Gallery

Organized by MOCA Cleveland

Curated by Megan Lykins Reich, Director of Education and Associate Curator

iona rozeal brown's latest body of work is based on a complex mythology that examines the pressures and obstacles facing young women today.  The MOCA Cleveland exhibition, iona rozeal brown: all falls down features fifteen visually stunning and conceptually rich figurative paintings.  Ranging in tone from playful and whimsical to raw and unsettling, this vibrant series takes brown's cultural sampling of African American hip hop culture and Japanese art history to new levels.

iona rozeal brown: all falls down received the 2009 Joyce Award in Visual Art.  Given by the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, IL, this award supports new commissions for artists of color.  As part of the award, MOCA commissioned brown to create new paintings based in part on Japanese Ukiyo-e prints from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, as well as to complete a residency with Cleveland-area high school students.  The MOCA Cleveland exhibition is brown's first Midwest solo museum show and it is the first museum presentation of her new work.

In this new work, brown creates a "journey of the hero(ine)" narrative filled with complex characters and an inventive allegory.  One particularly resonant character in this series is Yoshi, an enlightened warrior who communicates with divine spirits but remains on the earthly realm to guide young mortal spirits.  Paintings like King Kata #3: peel out (after Yoshitoshi's "Incomparable Warriors: Woman Han Gaku") (2007) provide a sense of Yoshi's fiery personality.  Wearing sunglasses, rocking a massive Afro, and rearing back on her Big Wheel with her hip hop slang cape behind her, Yoshi is a bad-ass scrapper with style and substance.  brown created a limited edition multiple for MOCA based on the character, Yoshi.

Confident, courageous, and sincere, Yoshi embodies the qualities that brown hopes to inspire in young women and men.  Consequently, Yoshi is the main character featured in brown's community outreach residency project at MOCA Cleveland.  In September 2009, a jury selected nine high school students from the Progressive Arts Alliance's 2009 RHAPSODY Hip Hop Summer Camp and the Visual Communications Arts Class at Shaw High School (East Cleveland).  In early 2010, brown worked with this group of students to produce a Japanese screen and a site-specific wall painting in MOCA's Dr. Gerald and Phyllis Seltzer Rotunda Gallery.

The Japanese screen includes both a landscape painting by brown and rhymes written by the students that relate their experiences as teenagers in today's complex world.  The wall painting features an enormous Yoshi in the pose of a character from Yoshitoshi's Tsuji Ya Hyoe Morimasa (1869), a print from the Allen Memorial Art Museum's collection.  Rather than hip hop cards, Yoshi's cape contains images created by the student apprentices that range from anime-inspired drawings to abstract designs.

The screen and the wall painting integrate brown's aesthetic with the students' perspectives on art, hip hop, identity, and culture in meaningful ways.  Collaborating directly with Cleveland-area youth connects brown's cross-cultural, cross-temporal sampling to the very generation to whom she is speaking.  By engaging students in her artistic practice, brown teaches them to draw inspiration from a diversity of sources in order to help inspire and transform their own experiences, outlooks, and mythologies.

This exhibition has been generously underwritten by the Joyce Foundation.

iona rozeal brown's work also on view at the Akron Art Museum's Pattern I.D. exhibition, on view through May 9, 2010.