Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language

Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language

Curated by Essence Harden and Daniela Lieja Quintanar
Opening July 7, 2018 – 2-4pm Emory Douglas Conversation, 4-6pm Reception
Exhibition Dates: July 8 – August 26, 2018

Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language considers the legacy and diasporic impact of the visual artist Emory Douglas. As the Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party and the graphic artist of the Black Panther Party Newspaper, Emory Douglas’ vision of black radical politics as a set of aesthetic concerns graphs a grammar of global struggle. Douglas’ imagery of anti-black police brutality and economic/housing discrimination is interlaced with American Imperialist projects and anti-colonist struggles happening globally. The enhancement and saturation of vibrant colors, figurative refusal, kinship, and border crossing visions of justice are the dialectics of possibility. The immediacy of global terror is call to resistance by everyday folks, who are depicted as active icons in the project for liberation. Bold Visual Language locates these initial concerns of Douglas in a contemporary discourse amongst visual artists and current social movements.

This exhibition features historical Black Panther Party Newspaper’s from Southern California Library, posters of remixed images by Emory Douglas, and works by Sadie Barnette, Juan Capistrán, Patrick Martinez, and embroideries of Zapantera Negra a project by the Woman’s Zapatista Embroidery Collective in collaboration with Douglas, organized by EDELO (En Donde Era La Onu) [Where the United Nations Used to Be] and artists Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow in Chiapas, México.

LACE’s summer storefront is dedicated to exhibitions that address deep historical, social, and political research of artistic practices. Focusing on practices that urgently call to be revisited and framed in a contemporary art moment, the storefront allows LACE to integrate significant social movements into the canon of contemporary art history. Summer 2017’s storefront exhibition El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975) initiated this curatorial focus, highlighting social art projects that define the history of Los Angeles and California, and reviving local community and personal archives. These exhibitions also create a space to host cross-generational conversations among contemporary artists.

Public Programming
Emory Douglas Conversation with Curators Essence Harden and Daniela Lieja Quintanar. Video courtesy of Mary Cullather and Los Angeles Filmforum.

August 11, 2018, Performances by Adee Roberson and Anna Luisa Petrisko. 7PM

Adee Roberson and Anna Luisa Petrisko will perform a live activation of the Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language exhibition. Using interwoven landscapes of video and sound, they will present textural abstractions on diaspora, healing, and community in conversation with Douglas’s work and legacy.

This performance coincides with the Black TED lectures that pertain to the CAVERNOUS exhibition by Young Joon Kwak & Mutant Salon.

Press:
Click here to read about the exhibition’s feature in Hyperallergic.
Click here to read about the exhibition’s feature in KCRW.
Click here to read about the exhibition’s feature in the LA Times.
Click here to hear our interview with KCRW.

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THANK YOU to all our interns for their energy and work for this exhibition: Jackie Castillo, Jinseok Choi, Zehao Fu, Krystal Ramirez, Israel Cedillo, Natalie Marsh, Rui Xu, Jennifer Baltazar, Ellen Joo, Beatrice Petropoulos-White, Renee Lung, Serena Sampson and Yinchen Niu.

Support for Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language is provided by Kathie Foley-Meyer and Irving Meyer, Pasadena Art Alliance, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This project is also possible by the continued collaboration with the community-owned Southern California Library and the invaluable support of artist Emory Douglas.