Curated by Senegal-born, Portland-based multi-disciplinary artist Modou Dieng, Transparency Shade: Seeing Through the Shadow is a group exhibition of two-and three-dimensional artwork that conveys post-identity semiotics, or the use and interpretation of visual and linguistic signs and symbols that function to form identity, at projects+gallery, St Louis, MO, from April 7 - May 27, 2017.
The show features work by Philip Aguirre y Otegui, Zoe Buckman, Kendell Carter, Kahlil Irving, Ayana Jackson, Michael Riedel, and Hank Willis Thomas.
The artists in Transparency Shade: Seeing Through the Shadow use cultural appropriation and hybrid materials to articulate the concept, engaging with and also problematizing such appropriation to investigate how meaning is and has been created in a postcolonial world.
Born in New Orleans and based in Long Beach, the work of Kendell Carter recalls the aesthetic vibrance and play of California pop and street art while dialoguing with issues related to race and gender that have pervaded the American sociopolitical environment for generations. Carter’s practice of mixing objects, materials and design traditions—from graffiti sculptures to bronze-plated sneakers—come together in immersive installations that champion the idea of art as experience and function as the starting point for discussions on community, consumerism, the definition of art and utility. In his sculptural installation We (2012), the artist fuses hip-hop and art history, constructing a visual rhythm that relocates and reimagines familiar objects to evoke a sense of the uncanny, while encouraging in the viewer a new understanding of identity politics and community construction.
