Media Contact:
Timothy Brown
Hillyer Director
hillyerdirector@artsandartists.org
PRESS RELEASE
Sensorial Africana Superrealities: Five Contemporary Diaspora Artists, Curator, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet, and Newly Selected Artists: Ellen Hanauer and Allan Rosenbaum, November 4–November 26, 2023. The opening reception is Friday, November 3 (“First Friday”), 6 to 8 p.m
Sensorial Africana Superrealities: Five Contemporary Diaspora Artists
(to the memory of Jeff Donaldson)
Curator, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet
Weaving symbolic, poetic, political, and socio-cultural references, Sensorial Africana Superrealities displays visual and material languages reaching locations such as North Carolina, Maryland, Cuba, Nigeria, England, and Washington, D.C. This exhibition interconnects African ancestral paths and realities that historically have emerged in transnational Black Atlantic and Caribbean territories. Employing personal histories, communal experiences, and territorial cartographies, the artists reveal how critical African-based knowledge still shapes today’s interdisciplinary cultural expressions.
Mapping imagined sensorial crossroads to project their reverse memories and complex histories, the artists engage in intercultural dialogue to express how, converging at Howard University, they continue the legacy of this iconic center of Black culture. Artists included in Sensorial Africana Superrealities are Elka Stevens, Akili Ron Anderson, Reginald Pointer, Raimi Gbadamosi, and Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet.
Featured Artists
Akili Ron Anderson (USA)
Elka Stevens (USA)
Raimi Gbadamosi (United Kingdom / Nigeria)
Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet (Cuba/USA/Mexico)
Reginald Pointer (USA
Ellen Hanauer
The Life The Children Built
Ellen Hanauer’s exhibition, The Life The Children Built offers visitors a thought-provoking journey into the world of two young child immigrants who arrived in America unaccompanied during the early 1900s. This exhibit visually narrates the immigration experiences of Hanauer’s grandfathers at ages eleven and thirteen, along with her great-grandmother’s challenges working in a textile mill as a child. Like countless other young immigrants, they ventured to America independently, seeking to forge better lives for themselves, and these artworks unveil their emotional odyssey. Through sculpture and installations, this exhibition captures their spirit, resilience, solitude, and hardships, with the aim of fostering understanding, empathy, and appreciation through storytelling.
This work shines a spotlight on aspects such as cultural adaptation, language barriers, courage, strenuous labor, ingenuity, homesickness, heartbreak, and the aspirations that drove these immigrants to pursue their dreams. This exhibition invites viewers to reflect on their own immigrant ancestors and to embrace today’s immigrants with the same pride and respect as if they were our own.
Allan Rosenbaum
Substratum
Substratum presents a series of sculptures featuring meticulously modeled and painted surfaces and inset areas of fabric collage and felted wool. Celebrating materiality and a remixing of the personal and the public, the work in the show probes relationships between craft, painting, and sculpture, while addressing issues of invention, memory, and restoration.
For this show, Rosenbaum draws inspiration from a collection of neckties inherited from his father as well as scrap from family sewing projects. His abstract constructions develop visual conversations between personal material and material he has collected representing diverse histories and geographies. His palette includes quilting scraps, Dutch wax fabrics, vintage kimonos, and deadstock fabric sourced from donations, estate sales, and the virtual marketplace.
Using curiosity as a guide, the exhibition is a quest for new forms and the alchemy that can occur when materials and processes are brought together in the search for the unexpected.
Exhibition Content
Visit Hillyer’s upcoming exhibitions to learn about the featured exhibitions in October 2023.
Image Credits (Left to Right):
Akili Ron Anderson, 2014, Eye on the Prize, acrylic on canvas; Ellen Hanauer, Grandpas’ Ties, 2020, wood, canvas, acrylic, 26 x 36 x 2; Allan Rosenbaum, Bobby Pins, 2023, resin, wool, repurposed textiles, fabric, paint, 25.5 h x 26 w x 5d in.
International Arts and Artists at Hillyer
Founded in 2006, IA&A at Hillyer (formerly Hillyer Art Space) is the Washington-area initiative of International Arts & Artists. Through its innovative and often provocative exhibitions and public programs, IA&A at Hillyer champions local and international artists at all stages of their careers.IA&A at Hillyer collaborates with artists, cultural organizations, and embassies to develop and host creative, thought-provoking programs that push our understanding and reflect the uniqueness of DC as an international capital. Whether you live in Washington or are visiting, IA&A at Hillyer invites you to encounter contemporary art from the US and around the world in a welcoming, and intimate gallery setting.Hillyer is open Tue-Sun from 12p – 6p (5p on weekends).