This month’s picks are all about community, networks of support, and perseverance. Lonnie Holley brings together a group of friends and colleagues in By Any Means Necessary, while tabernacle at FOCA explores themes of dislocation, diaspora, and domesticity. Vaginal Davis summons a cadre of influential performers through her “make-up paintings” and Sherrill Roland processes the isolation and dehumanization of incarceration through his diverse practice. EPOCH’s Xenospace explores how artists can utilize AI to counter virtual alienation through creative empowerment, and Exposure highlights the disastrous repercussions that nuclear testing and environmental exploitation have had on Indigenous people around the globe.
By Any Means Necessary
Curated by artist and musician Lonnie Holley, By Any Means Necessary brings together the work of several Black artists from the South whose creative visions persevere despite the limited resources available to them. Participating artists include Louisiana Bendolph and Rita May Pettway whose quilts draw on the legacy of their hometown Gee’s Bend; Hawkins Bolden, who created “scarecrow” assemblages made from found objects despite losing his sight at age 8; and Ronald Lockett, who scoured his town of Bessemer, Alabama for sheets of tin, which he assembled into dynamic abstract compositions. The exhibition is presented alongside a show of works by Thornton Dial, a close friend of Holley’s and a cousin of Lockett’s who encouraged the younger artist in his practice.