Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center & moCa Institutional & Artist Residency Jan 2023-May 2024 Installation of the exhibition ¡Juntos! (Together) in the Residency Gallery. Starting in January 2023, moCa will align its learning from the AIR Artist-in-Residency and Institutional Residency into a hybrid opportunity. Continuing a strong collaborative relationship developed with Julia de Burgos Cultural Art Center (JDBCAC) during moCa’s presentation of the exhibition Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. (July–December 2021), moCa and JDBCAC will partner on a year-long institutional and artist residency throughout 2023. JDBCAC will occupy and engage spaces on moCa’s first and third floors in relation to its mission and work, and co-design programming with moCa including an adapted AIR program to advance the work of Latino/a/x artists and artists of color and provide new professional development opportunities. JDBCAC and moCa will create two cohorts of early career artists who will work alongside mentor artists and arts leaders, and moCa will host exhibitions of these artists’ work throughout the duration of the residency. Generous support from Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly, The Cleveland Foundation, and the Callahan Foundation About Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center was founded in 1989 by Daisy Rivera and the combined efforts of the Cultural Educational Institute for Boricua Advancement (CEIBA) and the Hispanic Parents Union. These organizations united to realize a long time dream of establishing a family oriented center to serve the Latino youth and their families through programs and activities designed to foster cultural pride and art appreciation. Related Exhibitions ▶ Bruno Casiano: Pieces of Me ▶ ¡Juntos! (Together) ▶ BlackBrain Group: SCRD GRDN

J.J. Adams Flowers in Temporary Hands Jan 28-Jun 5, 2022 J.J. Adams, Booker (by the creek) , 1959. Courtesy the artist's family archives J.J. Adams’s Flowers In Temporary Hands explores the role that privilege and race play into an assemblage of any one identity. With four distinct iterations–an artist book, video performance, sound, and sculptural landscape–Flowers In Temporary Hands abstractly layers images as language, culling from a steeply personal and concealed post generational memory. Through a staircased soundscape, the audience is guided into a layered installation of images mounted on a labyrinthine chain-link fence, an echo of the artist’s most significant detainment as a teenage child. Flowers In Temporary Hands addresses legacy through photographs from Adams’s estranged grandfather’s archive, pages from Adams’s teenage journal while institutionalized, and newly produced poems that reflect on the artist’s past state of mind. All come together to reveal a striking but not uncommon portrait of a boy whose narrative of self has been mostly shaped by their single white mother. A series of tender gestures paired with visceral critical inquiry, Flowers In Temporary Hands reminds us that identity, just like history, is both contingent and incomplete. This series of stories has been built from a myriad of people, places, and moments in time. About the Book J.J. Adams’s first publication, Flowers In Temporary Hands , pairs images with language to establish a symbolic universe that mixes personal memory, loss, and desire. Composed of three sections that address different periods in the artist’s life, Flowers in Temporary Hands acts as a timestamp to closure. ​ In The Toothpaste Diaries , Adams shares pages of their journal: a collection of drawings, collages, and writing created during a defining moment of teenage incarceration. These richly layered pieces are juxtaposed with works from the Gregory Adams Archive . This collection of black and white photographs taken by the artist’s estranged grandfather document his own collegial life, from the playing field to the classroom. Poignantly capturing two distinct moments in time, The Toothpaste Diaries and the Gregory Adams Archive are threaded together by Boys Like Us: Part One , a series of formatted and densely layered poems that reflect on J.J. Adams’s past and the construction of family vs. identity. J.J. Adams’s Flowers In Temporary Hands is organized by Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo) as part of Toby’s Prize, a biennial award made possible by Toby Devan Lewis. About the Artist Jesse Hoffman Jesse Hoffman (b. 1989, San Francisco, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Hoffman’s practice is rooted in the examination of the transitional passages of self-acceptance, belonging, and image over time. With a background in performance, still life photography, and commercial set design, Hoffman uses the archive, the object, and the portrait as form. Hoffman’s work lays bare the complication inherent in identity, emphasizing the poignant resilience and fugue in image/world making.

News + Read more at Art in America Monday, November 7, 2022 Finnegan Shannon’s Exhibition on a Conveyor Belt Alleviates Museum Fatigue by Emily Watlington Art museums have developed a reputation for inducing a particular kind of exhaustion. Navigating crowds in order to get a glimpse at masterpieces, feeling overstimulated in blockbuster shows, and standing on hard concrete floors leads to what is commonly called “museum fatigue.” Exacerbating matters is the fact that museums just don’t have enough comfortable seating. For an exhibition at moCa Cleveland, Brooklyn-based artist Finnegan Shannon has taken matters into their own hands, with a show that requires no walking and offers ample seating. After arriving via elevator, visitors are invited to sit on couches and chairs while a conveyor belt parades by them a rolling display of artworks by Shannon’s artist peers. The setup’s closest proxy is conveyor belt sushi—but this is a feast for the eyes, rather than the taste buds. The soft seating feels decidedly more domestic than institutional; Shannon sourced the chairs and couches from local thrift stores. (They even found a small stool with a puzzle spelling out the first name of the show’s curator, Lauren Leving.) And Shannon tied it all together with some of their own homey touches, like embroidered pillows bearing fluorescent conveyor belts and cut-out cardboard letters on the wall spelling out phrases like DON’T MIND IF WE DO and WE BEING SILLY AND SERIOUS . Shannon further tends to their viewers’ bodies with DIY air purifiers made of duct tape and box fans that help alleviate Covid’s ongoing risk. The show encouraged visitors to slow down. On the wall, custom clocks told the day of the week rather than the hour of the day, as if asking, what’s the rush? It’s a show about promoting rest and alleviating museum fatigue, but more specifically, it is born of the disability justice movement. It’s aimed explicitly at questioning the ableist valuing of bodily exertion, as well as at the exclusionary assumptions museums make about bodies. Shannon considers the exhibition a fulfillment of their long-held “access fantasy.” Among the most charming pieces making the rounds are Emilie L. Gossiaux’s 3D-printed sculptures depicting various body parts of her guide dog, London—including a paw and a tongue. Also from Gossiaux is a journal full of hand-drawn illustrations of the color-identification system she created for herself after going blind, in which she associates colors with memories and feelings: a crayon that Crayola calls “purple mountains’ majesty,” for instance, is renamed “homecoming dress purple 2003.” Other pieces on the belt are interactive: visitors can lift them off and return them at their leisure. A card game by Jeffrey Kasper offers prompts for two players to engage in exercises promoting risk and intimacy. A Selection of Snapshots Taken by Felix Felix Gonzalez-Torres reproduces endearing correspondences, cat photos, and figurines that the late artist arranged lovingly on his pillows. For some photographs in the Gonzalez-Torres book, we see not the picture, but the description he wrote on the back: like HOME or MIAMI LANDSCAPE, 1995, SUMMER OF LOVE. These image descriptions are echoed in the audio description track Finnegan made for the show, accommodating blind and low-vision visitors. For Shannon, the access itself is often the artwork, and items like tissues and ear plugs (for those seeking a low-stimulus environment) both circulate on the conveyor belt and appear on the show’s checklist. As ever, Shannon takes great care with the details: the tissue box is in a fabric cozy in the shape of a house, the artist having removed the stairs that made its entrance inaccessible, and lovingly added lavender to the bushes. Here as elsewhere, Shannon approaches access, to quote organizer Kevin Gotkin, as “radical hospitality.” Implied in all this is the unseen effort that disabled artists often exert when working on an exhibition to make it accessible to our communities. Instead of keeping that work behind the scenes, Shannon compellingly makes it the subject of their debut museum solo. Shannon is best known for their benches and cushions that appear in group exhibitions, bearing statements like THIS EXHIBITION HAS ASKED ME TO STAND FOR TOO LONG. SIT IF YOU AGREE., written out in the artist’s signature script. The bold capital letters are polished off with soft edges and a lighthearted informality that mirrors their twinned playfulness and criticality. Shannon’s work is always participatory: their “Anti-Stairs Club Lounge” comprised a series of interventions, including a protest at the opening of architect Thomas Heatherwick’s gargantuan Vessel in New York, a 150-foot-tall structure made of interlocking staircases. Before it closed, it glorified 154 flights while promising a premier view. My own most memorable encounter with a Shannon intervention was at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, where I lay back in a cushioned chaise lounge to watch a gut-wrenching Nan Goldin slideshow, in which she relates how her sister’s institutionalization—and later, suicide—altered the course of her life. I became utterly engulfed, and started to wonder how many other treasures I’d skipped over because I hadn’t wanted to stand around, or squat on the floor, or sit on a hard, backless bench. That work induced in me a longing to lounge in museums. It also underscored a key contribution of Shannon’s work: the artist doesn’t just point out the absences and assumptions normalized in museums, they also dream up solutions. Rather than institutional critique, you might call it institutional repair. —Emily Watlington This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue. Previous Next

News + Read more at Crain's Cleveland Business Monday, November 6, 2023 Immersive Exhibits are Leading a Transformation in Cleveland Museums by Paige Bennett Previous Next

The Building Sat. Nov 4, 2023 9PM-1:30AM Mixtape: Alexander-John & Emory Jones Connect to CREATIVITY Kick off an amazing night with a special Artist Talk featuring iconic designer, creative director, and Cleveland native/Atlanta resident, Alexander-John (in person) and RocNation executive, culture curator and legendary businessman, Emory Jones (virtually). This segment will explore how their “Connect” led to the development of the classic Puma Mixtape I and II sneakers and how it has transformed sneaker culture. Lucky patrons will have the opportunity to win rare, ultra-exclusive Friends & Family pairs with a scannable NFC chip that grants access to exclusive music & content powered by Legitimate Tech! Serious sneakerheads won’t want to miss out. $25 $25 $25 Host Committee Aimon Ali Cierra Boyd Leon Boyd, Jr. Chris Cromity Camille Genise Manny Larcher Abbas Mandviwala Dan Moulthrop SOLD OUT 9PM: Doors Open 10PM: Artist Talk 11PM-1:30AM: Party! SOLD OUT ​ ​ Connect on THE FLOOR Gumbo Cleveland DJ NicNacc My Name is Bravo

A soft place to land Kevin Beasley, Margarita Cabrera, Pia Camil, Cass Davis, Alexandra Kehayoglou, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kaveri Raina, Liang Shaoji, and Marie Watt Jul 7-Jan 7, 2024 A soft place to land , installation view at moCa Cleveland, 2023. Photo: Jacob Koestler About the Exhibition A soft place to land highlights artists who use textiles to unpack personal histories and underscores the metaphorical and material importance of fiber arts in connecting these stories to broader cultural and societal narratives. Rooted in explorations of the physicality of memory, this exhibition demonstrates the ways that textiles function as, “containers of collective and individual memory, as devices capable of triggering emotional, psychological, and even physiological reactions, and as tools for expressing or retaining identity and narratives.” The artists in this international, intergenerational exhibition build upon fibrous foundations to share the moments and traditions that shaped them, elevating what may be thought of as mundane or ubiquitous objects to emphasize the immeasurable value of one’s lived experiences. Themes of resilience, homesickness, and the desire to feel connected emerge within this examination of material culture. The artwork in A soft place to land showcases the influence of place and placemaking on one’s identity, confronts intergenerational trauma and trauma associated with upbringing, and celebrates materiality as an essential tool in self-discovery. Installation Images A soft place to land . Installation views at moCa Cleveland, 2023. Photos: Jacob Koestler About the Artists Margarita Cabrera Margarita Cabrera A self-defined social practices artist, Margarita Cabrera ’s (she/her) work is often fueled by collaboration from community engagement to get a holistic view of social issues. Materials such as US Border Patrol uniforms and cochineal-dye are used, and transformed, to deliver a multi-tiered conversation on topics such as globalism, populism, and the migrant experience. Often in playful representation, Cabrera’s work, such as embroidered soft-sculpture potted desert plants; mimicking parrots made from found border patrol uniforms; and collaged works on paper made with cochineal dye, implores viewers to confront contentious topics by utilizing materials tied inextricably to the issue. Cabrera was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved to El Paso, TX at the age of 10. She received an MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY and is currently an assistant professor at the Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Kevin Beasley, Site XVI, 2022, Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia Cotton, altered t-shirts, confetti t-shirts, housedress, 74 x 55 x 2 in (188 x 141 x 5.1 cm). ©Kevin Beasley. Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Kevin Beasley Kevin Beasley (he/him) lives and works in New York. His practice spans sculpture, photography, sound, and performance, while centering on materials of cultural and personal significance, from raw cotton harvested from his family’s property in Virginia to sounds gathered using contact microphones. Beasley alters, casts, and molds these diverse materials to form a body of works that acknowledge the complex, shared histories of the broader American experience, steeped in generational memories. In March 2023, Beasley released A View of a Landscape , a 300-page book and double LP record, conceived as equal elements and designed together. The publication is produced in collaboration with the Renaissance Society and The University of Chicago Press. Recent exhibitions and performances include The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse , a touring exhibition curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, which traveled from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2021), to the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (2021), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2022), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2022); and Prospect.5, New Orleans: Yesterday we said tomorrow (2021), in which Beasley began a multiyear site-specific project in the Lower Ninth Ward. Pia Camil. Photo by: Pirje Mykkänen Courtesy of Pia Camil and Finnish National Gallery Kiasma. Pia Camil Pia Camil (she/her) is a Mexican visual artist based in San Mateo Acatitlán, State of Mexico. Her work ranges widely from painting and sculpture to performance and installation. Highlighting the importance of the collective and communal, her work is often inclusive and directly engages the viewer. Camil draws inspiration from her context with a critical and political interest around commercial culture or the frenetic pace of mass commodification. In an effort to gear away from industrialized labor, her practice is mostly done in collaboration with friends and specially skilled producers. Currently, her rural context is informing new ideas of the collective–the relationship of humans with nature and to other species. Camil is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Cass Davis. Photo: Gillian Fry Cass Davis Cass Davis (they/them) is a Chicago-based artist with an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their solo shows include Out of Time at Engage Projects, Revelations at University of Southern Indiana, HEARTLAND at G-CADD St. Louis, No Body on Earth But Yours with the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and Of Roses and Jessamine at SITE gallery, Chicago. Davis has shown in group exhibitions and screenings at the Design Museum Chicago, IL, Bemis Center in Omaha, NE, York St. John University, UK, Tile Blush in Miami, FL, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The American Medium in NYC, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, Springfield, IL, Terrain Biennial Oak Park and Springfield, IL, Mana Contemporary Chicago, Chicago Artists Coalition, 062 Gallery, Sullivan Galleries, and the Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery, Utah. They have been awarded the Praxis Fiber Arts Residency, HATCH Residency, Oxbow Artist's MFA Residency, Roger Brown Artist's Residency, IOTO Residency, and the Shapiro Center Eager Research Grant. They have been lecturing faculty in the Fiber and Material Studies department at SAIC. Alexandra Kehayoglou. Photo: Francisco Nocitois Alexandra Kehayoglou Alexandra Kehayoglou (she/her) is an Argentinian and Greek visual artist who works primarily with textile materials. She produces works combining textiles, sculpture and installation. Kehayoglou’s repertoire includes memories of various native and endangered landscapes that the artist has visited and desires to preserve over time. Her renowned pastizales (grasslands), fields, and shelter tapestries exhibit sublime realities which the viewer can contemplate or utilize. Her work is created from an ancient family tradition of weaving. She presented the No Longer Creek at Design Miami/Basel, decrying the decimation of the Raggio Creek in Buenos Aires. At the end of 2017, The Triennial of The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, included Kehayoglou’s work, Santa Cruz River . Tiona Nekkia McClodden. Palais de Tokyo 2022. Tiona Nekkia McClodden Tiona Nekkia McClodden (she/her) is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose work explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social commentary. McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach traverses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations. Most recently, her work has explored the themes of re-memory and narrative biomythography. Her writing has been featured on the "Triple Canopy" platform in Artforum , Cultured Magazine , ART 21 Magazine , and many other publications. She is the recipient of a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.McClodden lives and works in North Philadelphia, PA, and is the Founder and Director of Philadelphia-based, Conceptual Fade, a micro-gallery and library space centering Black thought and artistic production. Kaveri Raina. Photo: Zhiyuan Yang Kaveri Raina Kaveri Raina (she/her) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. Raina has had solo and two-person exhibitions at Chapter NY, New York; Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, PA; PATRON Gallery, Chicago, IL; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH; Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy; Assembly Room, New York, NY; Rata Projects, New York, NY; Permanent Collection/Co-Lab Projects, Austin, TX; Permanent Collection/Co-Lab Projects, Austin, TX; Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine, CA, among others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the National Indo-American Museum, Lombard, IL; Deli Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Klaus von Nichtssagend, New York, NY; Luhring Augustine, New York, NY, among others. Raina is the recipient of several fellowships and awards including the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship, the Ox-bow Residency Award, and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Fellowship Award. She is represented by PATRON Gallery, Chicago, IL. Liang Shaoji Liang Shaoji Liang Shaoji (he/him) studied soft sculpture with Maryn Varbanov at China Academy of Art. For more than thirty years, Liang has been interested in interdisciplinary creation in terms of art and biology, installation and sculpture, new media and textile. His Nature Series sees the life process of silkworms as a creation medium, the interaction in the natural world as his artistic language, time and life as the essential idea. His works are fulfilled with a sense of meditation, philosophy and poetry while illustrating the inherent beauty of silk. Selected exhibitions include: Liang Shaoji: A Silky Entanglement , Power Station of Art, Shanghai; The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China (touring exhibition), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smart Museum of Art; Liang Shaoji: As If , M Woods Art Museum, Beijing; the 3rd Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, the 5th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon the 48th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, Venice, and the 6th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (1999). Marie Watt Marie Watt Marie Watt (she/her) is an American artist. She is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and also has German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Iroquois protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. She is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon; Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, California; and Marc Straus Gallery in New York City, New York. Selected collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and Renwick Gallery, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum.

The Building Sat. Mar 16, 2024 9PM-1:30AM Vera Twins Connect to CREATIVITY Kick off an amazing night with a special talk with artists Kelby and Kelvin Vera. The brothers, who recently had their debuts at Miami Basel and NY Fashion Week, will unveil a new collection of paintings. The Vera Twins will share their unique "connect" and how they create art together. Then, hit the floor as moCa's iconic building turns into a dance club as DJs Ryan Wolf, Flaco Flash, and Yulissa spin 'til 1:30AM. $25 advance ($30 at door) Valet available SPONSORED BY GLOW Cleveland $25 advance ($30 at door) Valet available SPONSORED BY GLOW Cleveland $25 advance ($30 at door) Valet available SPONSORED BY GLOW Cleveland Host Committee Stina Aleah Michaella Angelo Drew Bobinski Shaun Crawford Thomas Fox Arnold Hines Original Artwork Raffle The Vera Twins have also donated a one-of-a-kind Vera Twins painting that will be raffled off onsite on Mar 16! Enter onsite by QR before 10:45PM. Artwork raffle details: In person QR raffle entries when doors open at 9PM. Must be present during the artist talk for a chance to win. Raffle entries end at 10:45PM. Original artwork valued at $3,500. GET TICKETS 2 ways to take home Vera Twins Art! Limited edition T-shirt Love is in the air! The Vera Twins strive for equality and unity which comes from their life experience and understanding that everyone they meet has lived through challenges. For that reason, in an often cold, divided world, the Twins choose to spread love. In light of spreading the message; The Vera Twins have exclusively curated this design for you as part of our moCa Connect Capsule Collection . Limited shirts will be available for purchase the night of Connect. 9PM: Doors Open 10PM: Artist Talk 11PM-1:30AM: Party! GET TICKETS About the Vera Twins When it comes to how the Vera Twins reach others, that inspiration comes in many forms. But if you ask them, the Vera Twins have a clear purpose. That purpose—this striving for equality and unity—comes from their life experience and understanding that everyone they meet is going through things. For that reason, in an often cold, divided world, the Twins choose to spread love. Connect on THE FLOOR DJ Ryan Wolf DJ Yulissa DJ Flaco Flash

Robert Banks and Dexter Davis Color Me Boneface Mar 18-Jun 5, 2022 Robert Banks and Dexter Davis, circa 1980 Longtime friends, Cleveland-based filmmaker Robert Banks and Cleveland-based painter Dexter Davis both embody a distinctly experimental vision, one that fosters an active exploration of the intersection between art and life. Though they work in different mediums, both Banks and Davis’s work harnesses abstraction’s potential to map personal, political, and psychological landscapes, using innovative techniques to reconstruct images. The artists grew up together in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood and, together in the 1980s, attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. Their artistic practices and lives continued to intertwine beyond art school, resulting in a longstanding friendship firmly rooted in shared experiences, material exploration, and a profound commitment to visual storytelling. ​ Color Me Boneface is a film and exhibition project that Banks envisioned based on his belief that Davis’s impactful practice has gone largely unnoticed and is deserving of (re)discovery. Beginning in November of 2021, Banks and Davis transformed a portion of moCa’s Mueller Family Gallery into a working studio, where Banks filmed Davis creating new work; conducted interviews with him, his friends, family, and colleagues; and collaborated with students from Cleveland’s NewBridge Center for Arts and Technology to shoot, create, and edit footage shot over Davis’s lifetime into seven short films. Functioning like an expanded portrait, Banks’s films both capture the essence of Davis’s creative spirit and exemplify his own commitment to film as a physical object, revealing the incredible material beauty inherent in the medium of analog moving image. The seven short films will premiere at the Cleveland Cinematheque on June 2, 2022, followed by an in-depth conversation between the artists. ​ Guided by the spirit of collaboration, the exhibition portion of Color Me Boneface presents a selection of Davis’s work complemented by photographs taken by NewBridge students documenting his artistic process. Mounted closely together, these photographs echo the filmstrips Banks uses in his moving image work, including the seven short films centering on Davis. The exhibition is organized in a loosely chronological fashion, beginning with Headhunter (1994), a large-scale mixed media piece that captivates visitors immediately upon entering the gallery. Moving clockwise through time, the most recently-created work featured in the exhibition, Rebecca Werner (2020), is the final touchpoint before entering the Cohen Family Gallery, which showcases footage from the Color Me Boneface films. ​ A fixture in the Cleveland arts community, Davis’s work lives in the homes of many local collectors. Works presented in this exhibition are borrowed by friends and supporters who have been following alongside Davis’s artistic journey. This element of the project reiterates the ways in which strong relationships undergird both Banks and Davis’s practices. At every level, Color Me Boneface reminds us of the power in embracing curiosity, criticality, and complexity, not just in visual culture, but in our friendship and kinship circles as well.

Amber N. Ford Someone, Somewhere, Something Jan 27-Jun 11, 2023 Amber N. Ford, Balloon Release for Bogard , 2021, digital photograph. Courtesy the artist Best known for photography, artist Amber N. Ford delves into the medium of sound as a tool to share intimate stories of grief. During her Winter/Spring 2022 residency at moCa, Ford used moCa’s space as a site to collect responses from audiences about their experiences of loss and trauma. Someone, Somewhere, Something applies this content in a new audio work presented in various unconventional sites throughout the museum to create poignant sound collages that make space for mourning while also supporting catharsis and healing. Lead support for Amber N. Ford: Someone, Somewhere, Something is provided by Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly. Additional support provided by The Callahan Foundation. About the Artist Amber N. Ford Amber N. Ford Amber N. Ford (b. 1994, Cleveland, OH) is an artist based in Cleveland, OH. She received her BFA in Photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art (2016). Interested in race, and identity, she is best known for her work in portraiture, which she considers a “collaborative engagement between photographer and sitter.” She has been featured in exhibitions at Kent State University, Transformer Station, SPACES Gallery, The Morgan Conservatory, The Cleveland Print Room, Zygote Press, and Waterloo Arts, as well as in outdoor public spaces on the Capitol Theatre Building located at the corner of Detroit and West 65th. In 2021, her work was on view at ThirdSpace Action Lab as a part of Imagine Otherwise . Recent awards include Gordon Square Arts District Artist-In-Residence (2019) and the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award (2017).

BlackBrain SCRD GRDN Feb 2-May 26, 2024 BlackBrain, Diamond Heart , mural in process, 2024. SCRD GRDN is a new project by BlackBrain and guest artists from Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, Unidos por el Arte. Representing a metamorphosis from lone artist into collective creative force and guided by the mantra "go fast, go alone; go far, go together," BlackBrain Group transforms solitary endeavors into dynamic collaborations grounded in a shared passion for storytelling through art. SCRD GRDN is an immersive painting installation about the resolute human spirit and its existential journey through oppression, justice, prosperity, and divine understanding. Fusing artistic styles and techniques, the series meditates on the interplay and influence between the inner self and the external forces that shape our existence. Each work includes symbolic, complex images floating within black voids, suggesting fertile seeds of existence that hold and balance tensions such as joy and melancholy, control and chaos, movement and stillness. Drawing inspiration from the awe and grandeur of Renaissance frescoes and monumental stained glass windows, the installation seeks to embody and express sacred meaning today. Comprehensively, SCRD GRDN creates a visual sanctuary where the diverse voices and experiences of the artists–and also, importantly, audience members–converge, intermingle, and resonate. As the artists’ encourage, “Join us on this visual odyssey—a journey that surpasses the conventional, ushering in a new era of shared experiences and inner growth.” SCRD GRDN is a project of moCa’s institutional and early career artist residency with the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center (JDBCAC) from January 2023-May 2024. Situated within the heart of Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre neighborhood, JDBCAC is an organization committed to the transformational power of preserving, educating, and promoting Latino heritage through history, culture, and the arts. JDBCAC occupies and engages spaces on moCa’s first and third floors in relation to its mission and work, and co-designs programming with moCa aimed at nurturing the next generation of artistic voices, providing a platform for Cuyahoga County-based residency artists to present their creations in a group exhibition at moCa Cleveland last season. advance the work of Latino/a/x artists and artists of color and provide new professional development opportunities. In 2023, BlackBrain artist Ariel Vergez took on the role of mentor artist to a new generation of artist voices involved in the moCa/JDBCAC early career artist residency, providing a platform for Cuyahoga County-based residency artists to present their creations in the group exhibition ¡Juntos! last year. Vergez, with his experience and innovative spirit, guided these emerging artists, illustrating the reciprocal relationship between mentor and mentee. Generous support provided by Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly, The Cleveland Foundation, and the Callahan Foundation Installation Images BlackBrain, SCRD GRDN. Installation views at moCa Cleveland, 2024. Photos: Jacob Koestler About the Artist BlackBrain Ariel Vergez, aka BlackBrain, is a seasoned artist with a rich heritage and a passion for storytelling through art. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida, BlackBrain is the child of two immigrants who came to the United States in search of opportunity and met each other while working in the service industry. Growing up in a household where art was a daily presence, BlackBrain pursued his passion for art at the collegiate level, studying Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art. With a background in product and graphic design, BlackBrain has worked with world-class brands and has a keen understanding of the importance of storytelling in design. He has fused that experience towards his first love art. This experience is evident in BlackBrain’s art series, which feature unique narratives, a cross-wiring of pop culture icons, and a vuja dé feeling of nostalgia. BlackBrain layers allegory, pop culture, and history to create new and at times, bizarre stories that inflect on the ‘remembered.’ Over the past decade, BlackBrain has been featured in a plethora of shows and has created a range of concentration of subject matter. He has completed a slew of murals worldwide, many of them focused in Los Angeles and Miami, his previous homes. BlackBrain is particularly known for his ability to tell stories through his art, which is a reflection of his pursuit to expound parody and symbolism as key tools to his method of creating rich visual stories. With a portfolio that spans across different mediums and styles, BlackBrain continues to push the boundaries of what art can be and challenge our perceptions of the world around us. His art is a dissection of ancient and pop cultural story telling. It work has a diversity that makes his art so unique and relate-able while maintaing mystery and depth.

Dana Oldfather Flyfall Jan 28-Jun 5, 2022 Dana Oldfather, Flyfall , 2022 (detail). Drawing, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist Luminous and dreamlike, Dana Oldfather’s paintings depict an imagined view of the world, one that prompts an introspective look at the layers and language of the human experience. Her portrayal of women engaged in everyday actions and tasks–climbing, swinging, stumbling, sneezing, loading the washing machine–merge current events, art history, folktales, and personal experience to evoke the emotional complexities of real life situations. In Flyfall (2022), a site-responsive drawing for moCa’s Kohl Atrium, a series of female characters are intertwined with a flock of Canadian geese. Rising up the three-story wall, the hybrid creatures appear to be simultaneously flying and falling. Both resilient and defeated, free and tethered, the figures capture the inherent tension of “fight or flight”—the term for our automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as mentally or physically frightening, the response that prepares us to fight or flee. ​ The richly imagined scenario in Flyfall and the range of possible interpretations that rise to its surface offer a reminder that our present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness and uncertainty. Are the women and the geese fighting or are they working together? Are they separate entities or a hybrid form? What and how are they feeling as they wrestle together? By embracing ambiguity, Oldfather reminds us that teetering off the edge can mean both the brink of collapse and the steadying of one’s step before taking flight. Both flying and falling are possible, but how we decide to interpret the story is up to us. Major support for Dana Oldfather’s Flyfall is provided by Joanne Cohen & Morris Wheeler. About the Artist Dana Oldfather Dana Oldfather currently works and lives just outside in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has been presented at the Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI; Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL; Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York; Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville, TN; Museum of Contemporary Cleveland; The McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown, Youngstown, Ohio; The Carnegie Center for Art and History, New Albany, IN; and the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She is the recipient of the William and Dorothy Yeck Award for Young Painters, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, and a Satellite Fund Emergency Relief Grant from SPACES Gallery, The Warhol Foundation, and The Cleveland Foundation. Her work has been published in Beautiful/Decay, ArtMaze Magazine, and The Art of Spray by Lori Zimmer.

News + Read more at W Magazine Tuesday, November 29, 2022 by Kat Herriman Photographs by Jesper D. Lund The artist’s college years are the focus of a new exhibition at the ICA Miami. The New York-based artist Nina Chanel Abney punches eyes out one at a time. Her life-size paper dolls don’t seem to mind. They crowd around the ankles of her standing desk, in blank anticipation, patiently waiting for her to finish their faces so they can go on to their destiny as protagonists in her primary-colored collages. Abney points down at the huddle encircling her feet. “It’s a dance scene,” she says. Assembling her dancers requires meticulous choreography. “One millimeter can shift an expression,” Abney says. Despite the precarity, Abney feels at home in this cut-and-paste world. Over the past decade, her figurative collages depicting the lives and stories of Americans like herself—Black, queer, working class individuals—have become a fixture of the art world. Her exuberantly colored paintings, executed with stencils and spray paint, mimic Abney’s collage aesthetic and make me think of artists like Henri Matisse, Kara Walker, and Lari Pittman—but Abney bats away these art-historical touchstones. She says her mother, who is also an artist, is the one responsible for her love of drawing and collaging. “I’ve been cutting and pasting since childhood,” Abney says. “I like the familiarity of it.” Raised in Chicago by her mother, Abney used drawing as a way to connect. In school, she and her sister invited their mostly white classmates to commission portraits of Black celebrities from them. Abney earned a BFA from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois before heading to Parsons, where she graduated with a masters degree in 2007. In 2008, she participated in the groundbreaking group show 30 Americans at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and as the exhibition traveled around the country her exuberant images depicting Black joy and pain began appearing in museums alongside fellow participants like Rashid Johnson, Renée Green, and Kerry James Marshall. In 2017, she had an exhibition with Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, and after that she was featured in monographic museum shows. Abney vibrates on a cultural frequency all her own and has also collaborated to create Air Jordan sneakers, as well as a version of the classic game card Uno. Her most visible pop cultural moment, an album cover created last year for Meek Mill’s Expensive Pain , was a tearful cartoon portrait of the rapper surrounded by nude women, a yacht, a motorcycle, and dollar signs. The ICA Miami exhibition of Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Energy, on view during Art Basel, focuses on Abney’s college years, when the artist was less assured in her queer identity and struggled to find a community that reflected the kind of person she wanted to be. An epic shower scene, notably, dwells on the awkwardness and discomfort of forced group dynamics. Abney was attracted to the universality of coming-of-age scenes; she is devoted to mediums freighted with childhood resonance and stories she knows can be found on the tip of the tongue. The conceptual second half of the Miami presentation opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland on January 27. Those works focus instead on the more positive side of Abney’s collegiate experience, and the energy is festive. “Like coming into myself and the celebration,” Abney says. The keystone work here depicts a raucous dance party like the ones Abney would have liked to attend. After the MoCA Cleveland show and a well-deserved break, Abney will be doubling down on her efforts to focus on public art and shift her language into three-dimensional sculptures. She’s not sure what they will look like yet, but she does know she wants those artworks to depict the lives of those unsung in the Western canon and be accessible to the public at all hours. “I always want the viewer to be able to feel like they have a connection with the work and recall some of their own similar experiences,” she says. “I’m good at finding communities that wants their stories told. I don’t feel like there is enough representation of Black masculine-presenting or queer women in media, so if I can bring my experience to life and it inspires others then I feel like I’m doing a good job. In earlier work, I was trying to make the content more ambiguous—now, it’s leaning toward the opposite.” Previous Next