Join us for the opening of quiet as its kept, the new group visual gallery exhibition curated by Harlem West!
As amplified by my quick witted kin at the grown folks table, I’ve concluded that it's an onerous feat to suppress a beast we refuse to name. "quiet as it's kept" serves as a visual examination of truth telling. Through multimedia image installation, textile art, and archival photography, this collection invites griots to re-tell a memory or recall some inherited story lore (or lies), demanding they truthfully recall their version of a life altering event. Most notably dripping from the mouth of Toni Morrison in ‘ The Bluest Eye’, quiet as it’s kept is a black cultural idiom thematically relayed while storytelling, usually post propositioning an unfortunate or unexpected occurrence. Within the first few paragraphs of the work, we are transported to early 1940s post-Great Depression small town Ohio, on some land scorched by an habitually unconfronted reality magnified by a child's pain. Catapulted into an unrelenting truth, we are tender the shores of Toni’s masterful worldbuilding and dangerous ability to tender the veil between honesty and cruelty. The skill of Toni’s literary blade, and two-edge mother tongue holds as an overall inspiration of the exhibition; inviting all who experience the work to annotate our relationship with honesty. Here, we require the truth to possess us tenaciously, confronting the dangers of quietly kept wildfire. Where in lies the balance with recalling what we somatically know to be true, and what we wish to have happened?
Featured Artists
Juniper Jones
Jalen Hamilton
Atoi Glennette
Amira Diaw
Opening reception is FREE and open to the public.