Ace AIR: BLACK LIKE OBSIDIAN – By Keioui Keijaun Thomas
- 12:00 am - 11:59 pm | Wednesday July 03, 2024
- Gallery | Ace Hotel New York
BLACK LIKE OBSIDIAN – By Keioui Keijaun Thomas
For Ace Artist in Residence – with Performance Space New York
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The exhibition Black like Obsidian builds on over a decade of the artist’s work exploring the affective and material conditions of Black and trans identity and expands on her ongoing practice of world-building to create spaces of safety, joy, and healing.
For this new installation, Thomas builds an immersive landscape by accumulating utilitarian objects like latex-free gloves, packing tape, recycled cardboard, construction signage, and plant matter – materials associated with gendered caretaking labor and climate catastrophe. She repurposes these common materials to create curtains , paper-bag soldiers, games, and other built and natural formations. For the artist, this is the setting of a speculative future where trans femmes have survived a mass extinction, highlighting how camouflage and metamorphosis serve as strategies for survival, and ultimately, transcendence.
About
Keioui Keijaun Thomas’ artistic practice engages with the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation, encompassing affective, material and economic dimensions. Through a captivating fusion of sculpture and performance, Thomas explores the transient nature of the “doll” as both a work in progress and a formidable elemental force. Utilizing an array of materials such as plastic, hair, sugar, rubber, tape, acrylic, water, enamel, glitter and skin, Thomas creates tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. @keioui
Over the last 40 years, Manhattan-based Performance Space New York has been propelling cultural, theoretical and political discourse forward. Futurity and world-building connect the interdisciplinary works they present — works that dissolve the borders of performance art, dance, theater, music, visual art, poetry and prose, ritual, nightlife, food, film and technology, shattering artistic and social norms alike. @performance.space.newyork
Ace Hotel’s Artist in Residence program is the embodiment of our deep conviction that artists deliver us a critical lens through which to understand the world and ourselves. On a quarterly basis, and curated in partnership with creative collectives and art institutions that inspire us, we invite artists across the globe to turn one of our hotel rooms into their studio for a month. Given time and space to create, the artist’s resultant body of work is then exhibited or showcased at Ace and shared with the public. @acehotelbrooklyn
Other events happening on Jul 03, 2024
LOAM x Two Good Series #3 with Danielle Alvarez at LOAM
In October last year, LOAM launched a year-long chef series with our friends at Two Good. Celebrating their latest cookbook, “Change The Course,” the seasonal dinners invite some of Australia’s most esteemed cooks to set tables around the book’s central theme – to do more with less. Next month, we’re excited to welcome chef, cook, and author Danielle Alvarez for the third installment of the series. Join us at LOAM on Wednesday 3rd July at 6.30pm for a multi-course menu…
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Upcoming events at Ace Hotel New York
Ace Artist-in-Residence & Powerhouse Arts present — Gallerina (Do Not) Disturb by Lauren Cohen at Gallery
In partnership with Ace Hotel Artist in Residence, Powerhouse Arts (PHA) is pleased to co-present Gallerina: Do Not Disturb a self-reflective multiverse that artist, Lauren Cohen, started in 2022. Cohen will participate as Artist in Residence, occupying a hotel guest room as a temporary studio, during the month of August. The residency culminates in an exhibition and series of programs hosted at the hotel opening Thursday, September 26th. While in residence at Ace Hotel New York, Lauren Cohen has developed 2-3 characters…
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Art World Chess with Lauren Cohen at Lobby
Lauren Cohen has been producing an ambitious body of work while completing her residency at the Ace Hotel New York. Her immersion in the art world over the last two years has wielded an array of sculpture, photographs, paintings, drawings and a film that will be open to the public on September 26th. One prominent piece in the exhibition is a large-scale ceramic chess set which is meant to show the various players in her chosen industry. The board displays two…
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