Press

Delita Martin – Press

PRESS

Afro News, August, 1, 2023
Reginald F. Lewis Museum Exhibit Highlights Afro-futurism Movement

…The full exhibit that was on display in Venice has been scaled down to feature eight artists, including pieces from talents such as M. Scott Johnson, Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Delita Martin and Felandus Thames. Through their art, guests have been encouraged to think beyond what people have known Black life and culture to be like both historically and currently. full article

Colossal Magazine, May 4, 2023
Invoking the Divine Feminine, Delita Martin’s Mixed-Media Portraits Embrace Self-Empowerment by Grace Ebert

“Duality is the idea that there are two realms within (the) spirit world,” says Delita Martin, “one that is seen and one that is unseen.” This coupling is a grounding force for the artist as she practices an alchemy of spirit and aesthetics, coaxing dynamic figures from a mélange of patterns, materials, and symbols. full article

Christies, September, 2022
Post-War to Present… and Collaboration with Galerie Myrtis: Time, Space, Existence: Afro-futurist Visions

Among the highlights are a groundbreaking group of six artworks in collaboration with Myrtis Bedolla, Time, Space, Existence: Afro-Futurist Visions from Galerie Myrtis. Each of the six artists—Delita Martin, Larry Cook, M. Scott Johnson, Monica Ikegwu, Morel Doucet, and Tawny Chatmon full article

Glasstire, June 2022
Tangible Advancement: An Interview with Delita Martin by Colette Copeland

Based in Huffman, Texas, artist Delita Martin creates work that reconstructs the identity of Black women through the layering of signs, symbols, and language, from historical to modern times. Her powerful, young, female protagonists project strength and confidence rooted firmly in the present, but also remain connected to their spiritual selves. full article

Culture Type, August, 2021
Latest News in Black Art: Guggenheim Hires Diversity Chief, Galerie Myrtis Presenting Exhibition at Venice Biennale, Kehinde Wiley Redesigns MTV Moonperson & More by Victoria L. Valentine

Galerie Myrtis Fine Art & Advisory of Baltimore, Md., was invited to participate in Personal Structures, an affiliate exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The Black-owned gallery founded by Myrtis Bedolla will present “The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined” featuring eight artists—Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames. full article

Luxe Magazine, January, 2021
On A Mission To Change Hearts And Minds Through Art And Activism by April Hardwick

For many creatives, turning a passion into a business seems far-reaching. But for artist Delita Martin, it was only a matter of time. “I had always imagined going out on my own,” she recalls. “And it was my husband who eventually encouraged me to live out my dream.” Propelled by her talent and his support, in 2016 Martin opened Black Box Press Studio outside Houston. full article

Whitewall, October, 2020
Myrtis Bedolla is Deploying Art to Address Political and Social Issues by Katy Donoghue

Galerie Myrtis presents “Women Heal through Rite and Ritual” through the end of the year. The show’s focus was conceived prior to this year’s health crisis, and yet its timing could not be more fitting. Work by artists Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Oletha DeVane, Shanequa Gay, Delita Martin, Elsa Muñoz, and Renée Stout look to non-Western traditions of the women’s role as nurturer, both physically and spiritually. full article

BMORE Art, June 22, 2020
Radical and Visionary: NMWA Collects 200+ Works by Women in 2020 by Cara Ober

…the museum also acquired one of Delita Martin’s stunning large-scale portraits that mix printing, drawing, collage, and stitching, from her recent museum solo exhibition after one museum patron established a fund to support the museum’s work with emerging contemporary artists. full article

BMORE Art, February 19, 2020
Leap of Faith: Delita Martin’s Calling Down The Spirits at NMWA by Lyric Prince

Walking through her solo exhibition, Calling Down The Spirits, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts felt like I was flipping through my grandmother’s photo albums, seeing intimate details of people that I could never know… full article

Hyperallergic, February 2020
Images of Black Women as Avatars of Spiritual Agency (featuring Delita Martin) by Angela N. Carroll

Delita Martin’s latest exhibition, Calling Down the Spirits, seeks to visualize the incorporeal and genetic strands that tether generations of Black women to each other and to the spiritual world. full article

Texas Observer, June 2018
Houston Artist Delita Martin Gives Black Women a Seat at the Table in New Exhibit by Roxanna Asgarian

The 300 women whose portraits are drawn on plates in “The Dinner Table” are all friends, family or acquaintances of the artist [Delita Martin]. full article

press-city-pressCity Paper, December 14, 2016
ESCAPE TO MIAMI: Baltimore goes to Art Basel

Galerie Myrtis – SPECTRUM ART FAIR: On the mainland, in Wynwood, Galerie Myrtis efficiently uses nearly every inch of its space, located in a breezy, visible spot near the back at Spectrum, showing work by Delita Martin, Morel Doucet, Anna U. Davis, Michael Gross, Ronald Jackson, and Jamea Richmond-Edwards. This is Myrtis’ first time at this fair – full article

press-international-reviewInternational Review of African American Art, 2015
Stayin Alive

…In this show S. Ross Browne, Nina Buxenbaum, Larry Judah Cook, Ronald Jackson, T. Elliott Mansa, Delita Martin and Arvie Smith draw from the familiar and the imagined to reinscribe the notion of blackness within the context of self. full article

Exhibitions

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto Blackness Reimagined – Venice Biennial

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined

2022 Venice Biennial Art Exhibition
April 23 – November 27, 2022
Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy


Photo by Matteo Losurdo

artwork | artists & curator | curatorial statement | artist talk | press | installation photos

In The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, artists assert agency over narratives of Black life, offer discourse into the socio-political concerns of African Americans, and pay tribute to the resiliency, creativity, and spirituality that have historically sustained Black people.
● Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis

FEATURED ARTISTS
Tawny Chatmon ● Larry Cook ● Morel Doucet ● Monica Ikegwu ● M. Scott Johnson ● Delita Martin ● Arvie Smith ● Felandus Thames

VENUE
Palazzo Bembo
Riva del Carbon # 4793
30124 Venezia, Italy

Galerie Myrtis thanks the following sponsors

Daniel F Bergsvik and Donald N. Hastler
Reginald and Aliya Browne
Ilona Sochynsky
The Tibbles Family Trust

Members of the European Cultural Centre Italy Team talk about the sixth edition of Personal Structures, how the project started years ago and its main aim and values
(Galerie Myrtis feature at 1:46)

YouTube player


Presenting the 2022 ECC Awards

Like every edition, the European Cultural Centre presents the ECC Awards to commemorate the closing of the exhibition and to honour the participants that haven taken part in it

During the Closing Event on Sunday 27th of November, 2022, ECC Italy announced the winners and special mentions of this year’s ECC Awards, which were carefully selected by the European Cultural Centre curatorial team. The winners received the unique award of the artwork “1 meter” by the Dutch artist René Rietmeyer, initiator of the project Personal Structures and of the European Cultural Centre itself. The nominees were selected for the categories of: painting and mixed media, sculpture and installation, photography, video and digital art, and university research projects and lifetime achievement.


see list of other recipients.

Artist

The Afro-Futurist Manifesto Blackness Reimagined Meet the Artist and…

Pastoral Scenes, Ralisha (detail) by Tawny Chatmon
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Meet the Artist & Curator

Tawny Chatmon, Artist
view resume

Tawny Chatmon (b. 1979, Tokyo, Japan) is a self‐taught, award‐winning artist who has been working in the field of photography for more than 17 years. The primary theme that drives Chatmon’s practice is celebrating the beauty of black childhood. She is currently devoted to creating portraits that are inspired by artworks spanning various periods in Western Art with the intent of bringing to the forefront faces that were often under‐celebrated in this style of work.

Museum Collection:
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Microsoft Corporate Collection
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
University of Maryland Global Campus

Larry Cook, Artist
view resume

Larry Cook (b. 1986, Laurel, Maryland) is an award-winning photographer and conceptual artist whose work spans installation, video, and photography. Cook’s work explores the cultural aesthetic of “club” photography to examine how urban culture and incarceration systems become entwined through backdrops. The backdrop is central for its relationship to the formal, social, and cultural aspects of photographic history.

Museum Collections:
Baltimore Museum of Art (promised gift)
Museum of Modern Art
Harvard Art Museums

Morel Doucet, Artist
view resume

Morel Doucet (b. 1990, Pilate, Haiti) is a Miami‐based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator that hails from Haiti. He employs ceramics, illustrations, and prints to examine the realities of climate‐gentrification, migration, and displacement within the Black diaspora communities.

Museum Collections (selected):
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
UK Contemporary Art Society, Plymouth Box Museum
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art



Monica Ikegwu, Artist
view resume

Monica Ikegwu (b.1998, Baltimore, Maryland) is a figurative painter. She presents her ideas of the figure in a way that is not only captivating, but also unconventional in her use of color, texture, and composition.

Museum Collection:
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African
American Art





M. Scott Johnson, Artist
view resume

M. Scott Johnson (b. 1968, Inkster, Michigan) is a New York City‐based artist and educator, has carved out a legacy as one of the most stimulating and unique artists of his generation. M. Scott has explored, both in his practice and through his 20‐year visual arts teaching residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, a rich vision of contemporary Afro‐aesthetics.

Museum Collections:
The Hampton University Museum
The Schomburg Center Research in Black Culture
Embassy of Oslo Norway, Arts in Embassies Program



Delita Martin, Artist
view resume

Delita Martin (b. 1972, Conroe, Texas) is a master printmaker, illustrator, and painter based in Huffman, Texas. Through the weaving of history and storytelling, Martin offers a new narrative on the power of women whose stories are not only layered in textures and techniques but also symbolism.

Museum Collections (selected):
Crystal Bridges Museum
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minnesota Museum of American Art
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Library of Congress
The Studio Museum in Harlem
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Art

Arvie Smith, Artist
view resume

Arvie Smith (b.1938, Houston, Texas) transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the American experience into lyrical two‐dimensional master works.

Museum Collections (selected):
Delaware Museum of Art
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
Portland Art Museum
Reginald F. Lewis Museum

Felandus Thames, Artist
view resume

Felandus Thames (b. 1974, Jackson, Mississippi) is a conceptual artist living and practicing in the greater New York area. Thames’ work attempts to transcend didacticisms that are typically associated with anachronistic understandings of representation and instead aligns itself with ideas around the taxonomy of human difference.

Museum Collections (selected):
Aspen Museum of Art
Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art
Smith Robertson Museum
Studio Museum of Harlem

Myrtis Bedolla, Curator
about myrtis

Myrtis Bedolla is the owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis, an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century American art with a focus on work created by African American artists. Bedolla possesses over 30 years of experience as a curator, gallerist, and art consultant.

Established in 2006, the mission of the gallery is to utilize the visual arts to raise awareness for artists who deserve recognition for their contributions in artistically portraying our cultural, social, historical, and political landscapes; and to recognize art movements that paved the way for freedom of artistic expression.

Artist

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being About the Artists

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being – About the Artists

about the exhibition | view artwork

Lavett Ballard is a mixed media artist who describes her work as a re-imagined visual narrative of African descent people. Ballard’s use of imagery reflects social issues affecting primarily Black women.

Wesley Clark is a conceptual artist whose work challenges and draws parallels between historical and contemporary cultural issues. Clark’s primary focus surrounds blacks in America and the African Diaspora. He examines the young black male psyche and the feeling of being a target.

Alfred Conteh is a painter who presents visual explorations of how people from the African Diaspora societies living in the South are fighting social, economic, educational, and psychological wars from within and without to survive.

Susan Goldman is a printmaker whose “Squaring the Flower” series explores geometry and decorative form. Love of pattern and underlying passion for color and beauty informs playful layering and improvisation. The flower gets stripped away, covered up, and over-printed, yet it always finds a way back in, like a melodious refrain or a cherry blossom in springtime.

Michael Gross is a painter and printmaker whose intensely colorful works are frenetic studies of light and movement. For Gross, every piece attempts to capture a moment of equilibrium, a kind of elegant balance in time and space, and record it permanently.

Michael Gross
The Measure of a Man, 2018
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48″


M. Scott Johnson is a photographer and sculptor. As a photographer, Johnson navigates and interprets light, space, and soul in his Landscape Astrophotography series, which represents a yearly pilgrimage to the dark sky of New York’s Adirondack Park, where he captures the rising of the planet Venus in the Northern Hemisphere. As a sculptor, Johnson’s aesthetic and philosophical explorations are shaped by the landscape of his atavistic memories.

Megan Lewis is a painter whose work is a visual series built on her curiosities, experiences, memories, and thought processes. Gathering what she has known to be true becomes the foundation and framework of her artistry. Lewis creates work to express and share her joys.

Delita Martin is a printmaker who portrays Black women as magical beings that possess the power to transcend their black skin and exist in a spiritual form. Through the weaving of history and storytelling, Martin’s work offers narratives on the power of women whose stories are not only layered in textures and techniques but also symbolism.

Arvie Smith is a painter who works transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the American experience into lyrical two-dimensional masterworks. Smith’s work is commonly of psychological images revealing deep sympathy for the dispossessed and marginalized members of society in an unrelenting search for beauty, meaning, and equality.

Nelson Stevens is a painter and member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune for Bad Relevant Artists) whose aesthetic is rooted in activism and a commitment to create imagery that rails against racism through positive, powerful, and uplifting imagery.

Felandus Thames is a conceptual artist whose work transcends didacticisms that are typically associated with anachronistic understandings of representation and instead aligns itself with ideas around the taxonomy of human difference. Thames is also interested in the interplay between the personal narrative and the imagined, uses humor to allow the viewer to ease into disconcerting motifs.

Exhibitions

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being

Ontology: Communal Expressions of Being

February 19th – April 30, 2022

FEATURED ARTISTS
Lavett Ballard | Wesley Clark | Alfred Conteh
Susan Goldman | Michael Gross | M. Scott Johnson
Megan Lewis | Delita Martin | Arvie Smith
Nelson Stevens | Felandus Thames

about the artist | view artwork

This group exhibition explores concepts of existence and being, drawing inspiration from the metaphysical theory of ontology, the study of the nature of things, and their reality, identity, and relatedness.

In this exhibit, visual narratives conceived in conceptual work, paintings, prints, photography, and sculpture draw parallels between shared occurrences and belief systems derived from the artists’ personal experiences and convictions. Here the theory of ontology will be tested and either accepted or rejected as truth, as we question, do our human experiences inextricably link us? Discourse on the notion of communal expressions will challenge relatedness. And social constructionism leads the debate on what defines being, reality, and identity.


Megan Lewis
Calm, 2021
Oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 36 ″

Artist

UTA Artist Space – Literary Muse

UTA Artist Space in collaboration with Galerie Myrtis presents
Literary Muse curated by Myrtis Bedolla

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 4, 2-5PM
UTA Artist Space
403 Foothill Rd. Beverly Hills, CA 90210
utaartistspace.com

UTA Artist Space presents Literary Muse, a new group exhibition inspired by Black literary novelists, poets, and scholars, curated by Baltimore-based Myrtis Bedolla of Galerie Myrtis. On view from September 4 through September 25, 2021, the powerful presentation brings together paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures by twelve contemporary artists working across the United States: Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames.

The incisive writings of Black scholars, poets, and authors of fiction bear the weight of a complicated history, at times celebrated and at others, bemoaned. In Literary Muse, their words are the interpretive impulse for imagery that defines the architecture of the Black ethos. The result is a visual vernacular constructed in paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and conceptual works composed in hair beads and wood that interrogates the inherent complexities of race.

Steeped in the writings of authors such as Ta-Nahisi Coates, bell hooks, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Charles Sowell, Alice Walker, and Isabel Wilkerson, these artists draw from a lexicon of Black narratives. They create visual illustrations that probe the connection between the past and present, challenge the inequalities of structural racism, honor the traditions of the Black family’s devoted fathers and mothers, encourage Black economic empowerment and selfhood, and give symbolic meaning to poetry and fiction through visual tropes that explore Black plight.

Looking for inspiration beyond the prose of philosophers, economists, theorists, psychologists, sociologists, and historians, artists turn to the lyrics of Black composers and vocalists elucidating a truth—a gospel truth—bound-up in ancestry and spirituality rooted in the polyrhythms of Africa. Here, they find their muse in rhythms first laid down in African American spirituals which influenced the gospel, jazz, R&B, hip-hop, and rap music of today. These are the sounds that permeate the artists’ studios, consciously and subconsciously inspiring works that touch the depths of our souls.

Through the confluence of literature and artistry, Literary Muse contextualizes the Black experience through a non-Western lens. The notion of Blackness, its history, ancestry, and culture are presented as written and interpreted by its people. Scholars and composers who might otherwise remain obscure are placed at the forefront, as their words influence profound works that offer critical discourse on that which affirms and defines what it means to be Black.

— Myrtis Bedolla

“Myrtis Bedolla has a sharp eye for extraordinary artists. To wield their art and animate the words of these great Black authors and poets—to bring their narratives to life visually—is a phenomenal talent,” says Arthur Lewis, UTA Fine Arts, and UTA Artist Space Creative Director.

image
Oluma x Chimdi x Anwi by Monica Ikegwu, Oil on Canvas, 36″ in x 48″ in, 2021,
Literary Muse: Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Myrtis

Renaissance: Noir at UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA…

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Renaissance: Noir, a virtual exhibition featuring works by 12 emerging Black artists, live on UTAArtistSpace.com from June 9 – July 3, 2020. Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Baltimore-based owner of Galerie Myrtis, Renaissance: Noir investigates Blackness on the continuum of the historiographies of Black artists’ narratives that assert, individually and collectively, their state-of-mind and state-of-being Black. The timeliness of the exhibition is particularly significant, as its launch comes amidst a heightened awareness of racial injustice against the Black community, with protests occurring around the world. The show marks UTA Artist Space’s first full virtual exhibition.

view the exhibition

The artists highlighted in Renaissance: Noir are Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, Nelson Stevens, and Felandus Thames. Their work collectively captures the existence of “double consciousness,” as coined by W.E.B. DuBois, where one is constantly combating the “isms” —racism, colorism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, escapism, and criticism through the act of artistic activism.

Exhibitions

Renaissance Noir UTA Artist Space

Renaissance: Noir
UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA
Curated by Myrtis Bedolla

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Renaissance: Noir, a virtual exhibition featuring works by 12 emerging Black artists, live on UTAArtistSpace.com from June 9 – July 3, 2020. Curated by Myrtis Bedolla, Baltimore-based owner of Galerie Myrtis, Renaissance: Noir investigates Blackness on the continuum of the historiographies of Black artists’ narratives that assert, individually and collectively, their state-of-mind and state-of-being Black. The timeliness of the exhibition is particularly significant, as its launch comes amidst a heightened awareness of racial injustice against the Black community, with protests occurring around the world. The show marks UTA Artist Space’s first full virtual exhibition.

view the exhibition

The artists highlighted in Renaissance: Noir are Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, Ronald Jackson, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, Nelson Stevens, and Felandus Thames. Their work collectively captures the existence of “double consciousness,” as coined by W.E.B. DuBois, where one is constantly combating the “isms” —racism, colorism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, escapism, and criticism through the act of artistic activism.

Renaissance: Noir Blackness on the Continuum


by Myrtis Bedolla, Curator

Tea With Myrtis

Artistically Speaking

Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking

These are one-on-one conversations between an artist featured in the Women Heal through Rite and Ritual exhibit and Myrtis Bedolla. Offered as a twist on the formal teas held in the gallery, the virtual chats promise to be lighthearted and spontaneous. So brew your favorite tea and join me for tea time.

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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Oletha DeVane
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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Lavett Ballard
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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Elsa Muñoz
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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Tawny Chatmon
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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Shanequa Gay
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Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Delita Martin
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Catalogue

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual – Exhibition Catalog

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual

Exhibition Catalogue

Price: $25.00 USD + S&H

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual draws from the imaginative narratives of artists Lavett Ballard, Tawny Chatmon, Oletha DeVane, Shanequa Gay, Delita Martin, Elsa Muñoz, and Renée Stout who look to non-Western traditions for inspiration in exploring a woman’s role as nurturer of family and community; and as a traditional healer, conjure woman, and clairvoyant who dwells in both the physical and spiritual realms.

about the exhibition | artwork

Curatorial Statement by Myrtis Bedolla
 

Paperback: 53 pages | color
Year published: 2021
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-9819602
Dimensions: 9 x 9 inches