Welcome to the Sauce
Welcome to the Sauce is a group show featuring Alexandre Edoh Yao Amega, J. Alpha Massaquoi Jr, Ítalo Duarte De Déa, and Kayla Fryer. These four artists make up the “Hot Sauce Artist Collective,” formed in 2018.
The galvanizing vision of these four creatives is to create opportunities for other artists while still making compelling art here in Baltimore, MD. Their “spices” come from all over the world - members of the group have ancestry rooted in Togo, Liberia, Brazil, Guiana, and the United States. The artwork they create represents singular perspectives from their experiences within cultural and social structures. The collective emphasizes honoring the people of the world, capturing emotions, and depicting history through ordinary moments.
Welcome to the Sauce is the first time Hot Sauce Artist Collective are showing together under one roof.
Hot on the Block
HOT ON THE BLOCK unites ten artists including Will Watson, Marie Amegah, Ambrosie, McKinley Wallace III, Charles Mason III, Gabriel Amadi-Emina, KOLPEACE, Ky Vassor, Chima Ezenwachi, and Raquel Thompson.
Art movements such as Impressionism and Young British Artists were started by a small group of creatives connected by a specific purpose. The artwork they created and the avenues taken to display it was a reaction to circumstances relevant to their time period.
The ten artists on display in this exhibition enlightened, questioned, surprised, and inspired their Baltimore constituents. Now it is time to contemplate their work altogether and experience the energy that kept Baltimoreans hopeful and active during these notorious times.
Jambalaya
Jambalaya is a solo show of photographer and 2019 Sondheim Fellowship Awardee, Akea Brionne Brown’s work.
Jambalaya is a compilation of imagery, collage, and writing that examines the varying cultural, social, and geographic influences of her identity as a black femme in America. With a particular emphasis on lens-based examination, this collection of work includes old, new, and found imagery that seeks to give space to individuality within the reduction of Blackness and Womxnhood in America, as homogeneous. Through this exploration, she invites viewers into the influences that helped shape her identity and the rejection of the expected performance of her blackness. Simultaneously, this works seeks to pay homage to her ancestors, their experiences, and how it has paved the way for her individual liberation.
Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, the title references Brown’s foundation, both geographically and culturally; she gives space to the varying landscapes, cultures, and people that have shaped the understanding of who she is, while simultaneously allowing for the reclamation of who she can be.
The exhibition opens to the public on September 12, 2020. Viewers can enjoy an all day viewing at Eubie Blake Cultural Center (847 N Howard St. Baltimore, MD 21201) from 12pm - 5pm as well as an outdoor reception in the evening from 6pm-8pm. For safety and wellness purposes, there will be a limited number of people allowed in the gallery at one time. The exhibition will be on display through October 24, 2020.
Abstract Constraints
Abstract Constraints is the first solo show of painter and recent graduate from Maryland Institute College of Art, Chuckwuemeka Chukwu’s work.
Beginning in the 1940s and 50s, much of the abstract art created during that time was an attempt to free artwork of figurative structures and create work that was more “open” and loose. Chukwu amalgamates loose mark-marking with stiff geometric structures, therefore giving himself limitations comparable to those of the human anatomy and architectural physics. To further challenge his exploration, he allows for the shapes within the painting to grow on the canvas resulting in a spontaneous reshuffling of space.
Abstract Constraints provides insight into the mind of an illimitable strategist. These large scale paintings draw comparisons to launch codes and blue prints, giving viewers a plethora of shapes to observe. The paintings invigorate imagination while working within the constraints of one’s environment.
This exhibition opens to the public on September 12, 2020. Viewers can enjoy an all day viewing at Eubie Blake Cultural Center (847 N. Howard St., Baltimore, MD 21201) from 12pm - 5pm as well as an outdoor reception in the evening from 6pm-8pm. For safety and wellness purposes, there will be a limited number of people allowed inside the gallery at one time. The exhibition will be on display through October 24, 2020.