Women Heal through Rite and Ritual – Renee Stout

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual

Lavett Ballard | Tawny Chatmon | Oletha DeVane | Shanequa Gay | Delita Martin | Elsa Muñoz | Renée Stout | exhibition page

Renée Stout

I aim to present my perspective on this society from the point of view of a person who happens to be a woman descended from myriad cultures, but primarily African American. I observe, I experience, I process and I eventually feel compelled to construct a narrative that expresses thoughts, ideas and experiences that are simultaneously personal and universal. Through my work, I seek to tell an ongoing story as a way of bearing witness to the efforts of marginalized people everywhere, who make do to get through and the strength and creativity that often comes with that persistence. My desire is to reveal the rich, ever-evolving, alternate universe inside of my head as I navigate this limited and outdated system that seeks to mold our everyday reality in ways that run counter to our authentic selves. This parallel universe, filled with mysterious visionary soldiers, strange technological devices and evidence of ritual acts, provides me a kind of transcendence to a state of empowerment that I wish to share with the viewer. Through my work I want to convey the idea that while all human beings may have to function within this theater of the absurd, we don’t have to be of it and the ability to imagine and an open mind is a form of resistance and the escape route.

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Biography | Resume

Biography
Born in Junction City, Kansas in 1958 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Stout received her B.F.A. in painting from Carnegie- Mellon University in 1980. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1985 where she began to expand into mixed media works. Her early sculptural works found their inspiration in the aesthetics and philosophy of Kongo ritual objects, leading to her becoming the first American artist to have a solo exhibition in the Smithsonian’s Museum of African Art. Stout now creates in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, mixed media sculpture, photography and installation. Through her narrative works, she aims to explore issues that are both personal and universal. In recent bodies of work, she has shared her concerns about the current social and political turmoil as she simultaneously offers the viewer a glimpse into the parallel universe she has created. Stout’s has won many awards, including A Joan Mitchell Award, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art. Her work can be found in numerous museums and private collections, nationally and internationally.

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I Can Heal by Renée Stout
courtesy of Wellin Museum of Art

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual – Elsa Munoz

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual

Lavett Ballard | Tawny Chatmon | Oletha DeVane | Shanequa Gay | Delita Martin | Elsa Muñoz | Renée Stout | exhibition page

Elsa Muñoz

Desahogamiento, literally translated as “the act or process of undrowning,” has always been with me. I grew up hearing this word from my mother who believed in grief as medicine. She would describe desahogamiento as the self-directed, embodied “grief work” which makes healing possible. But it wasn’t until reading “Woman Who Glows in the Dark” by curandera Elena Avila that I learned desahogamiento is a literal healing technique within curanderismo, or Mexican folk medicine. My praxis is centered in the union of intuitive ways of knowing (particularly dreamwork and storytelling), our changing climate realities, and the role of art as a somatic healing technology. In this, my paintings manifest from the act of undrowning.

I am interested in the study of ecopsychology, the idea that our bodies (including unconscious aspects of the psyche) are sensitive to the transitions of the biosphere; somatic ecology, the theory connecting our relationship to our bodies to the environmental crisis; and what Gloria Anzaldúa termed “La Facultad: an intuitive form of knowledge that includes but goes beyond logical thought and empirical analysis.” These narratives are moving, urgently, to the forefront for a generation of artists concerned with realigning nature-culture relationships and reframing dominant narratives surrounding bodies of color, indigenous lands, and the cultural impact on both.

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Biography | Resume

Biography
Elsa Muñoz is a Mexican-American artist born and raised in Chicago (1983). She received her BFA in oil painting from the American Academy of Art (Chicago, IL) in 2006. She’s since had 8 solo shows including one at the National Museum of Mexican Art (2011) and at the Union League Club of Chicago (2016) along with several group shows throughout the United States. Most recently, she was a 2019 recipient of the Helen & Tim Meier Foundation Achievement Award, a generous grant which will allow her to expand her practice. She is very excited to work in a proper studio outside of her apartment.

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CONTROLLED BURN 14
I first began the Controlled Burn series in 2009. At the time, my attraction toward this symbol was rooted in a personal encounter with one in childhood. A forest guide explained to my 3rd grade class that in forestry, prescriptive fire is a healing agent. Fire removes invasive species and returns nutrients back to the soil, renewing it. Learning that fire could be an agent for health and restoration was powerful. And given my interest in psychology, it was a symbol I carried closely for the parallels I could draw between fire and the effects of trauma. A slowly regenerating forest ground became a symbol for (and a promise of) resilience.

More recently, however, this series has taken on a completely different tone in light of our current ecological crisis. With the recent bushfires in Australia, a video [Mishandling of Fires in Australia] interview began circulating online featuring an Australian indigenous fire practitioner named Victor Steffensen. The interviewer asks, “What do you do? How is what you do different to the way the rest of the firefighting community operates?” Steffensen responds, “It’s totally opposite to what everyone is doing here. Everyone’s talking about the aftermath and it’s always the way Western society works–always acting when it’s too late. Whereas all the work I do is in prevention of that, not to save your own house, but to save the bushlands and look after the environment as a whole.” He goes on to explain that these devastating fires could have been completely avoided if frequent controlled burns had been regularly administered to the land. The practice of controlled burning is, in effect, preventative indigenous medicine.

It’s become apparent that much of our worldwide climate despair is a reckoning of settler colonialism and its practice of rampant resource exploitation, replacing indigenous ways of knowing and co-existing with nature. Through these climate-related crises, we are urgently being called to re-indigenize our ways of understanding and of living on this earth.

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Artist’s Short

 
Mishandling of Fires in Australia

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual – Delita Martin

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual

Lavett Ballard | Tawny Chatmon | Oletha DeVane | Shanequa Gay | Delita Martin | Elsa Muñoz | Renée Stout | exhibition page

Delita Martin

Works in the I See God in Us series are not only layered in textures and techniques but also in symbolism. The color blue is used throughout in varying shades. The color is a symbol of the night and representative of a magical and spiritual place; a place that is deeply grounded in cultural and oral histories that allow for the acceptance of magic in an otherwise rational world. The women in the works are magical beings that possess the power to transcend their black skin and existence in a spiritual form. Through the weaving of history and storytelling, they offer a new narrative on the power of women.

Working from oral traditions, vintage and family photographs as a source of inspiration; my work explores the power of the narrative impulse. My process of layering various printmaking, drawing, sewing, collaging, and painting techniques allows me to create portraits that fuse the real and the fantastic. In my work, I combine signs and symbols to create a visual language. By fusing this language with oral storytelling, I offer identities and narratives for women of color.

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Biography | Resume

Biography
Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and an MFA in printmaking from Perdue University. Formerly a member of the Fine Arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Martin currently works as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press.

Working from oral traditions, vintage and family photographs as a source of inspiration, Martin’s work explores the power of the narrative impulse. Her process of layering various printmaking, drawing, sewing collaging and painting techniques allow her to create portrait that fuse the real and the fantastic. In her work, she combines signs and symbols to create visual language. By fusing this visual language with oral storytelling, she offers other identities and other narratives for women of color.

Martin’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently, Martin’s work was included in State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now, an exhibition that included 101 artists from around the United States. She was also included in the International Review of African American Art as one of 16 African American artists to watch, as they are gaining national and international attention in 2015.

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Delita Martin–Draw, Paint, Print: The Artist’s Process

 
Tea with Myrtis: Artistically Speaking with Delita Martin

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual – Shanequa Gay

Women Heal through Rite and Ritual

Lavett Ballard | Tawny Chatmon | Oletha DeVane | Shanequa Gay | Delita Martin | Elsa Muñoz | Renée Stout | exhibition page

Shanequa Gay

My work evaluates place, tradition, storytelling, and subject matter to develop imaginative dialogues and alternative strategies for self-imaging. Through installations, paintings, performance, video, and monumental sculptural figures, I am fabricating environments of ritual and memorial, depicting amalgamated images of new gods and mythical figures whose lives have been impacted by systemic inequalities. By developing counter and re-imagined narratives that live within the duality of physical and spiritual worlds, I am exploring the historical and contemporary social concerns of hybrid cultures, through the gaze of the African-Ascendant female progenitor.

Photo Courtesy of Harold Daniels

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Biography | Resume

Biography
Shanequa Gay, an Atlanta native, received her AA in Graphic Design and Fashion Marketing from the Art Institute of Atlanta (1999), a BA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), summa cum laude (2015), and an MFA at Georgia State University. Gay was one of ten selected artists for OFF THE WALL a city-wide Mural initiative led by WonderRoot and the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee (2018). In 2013, Gay was chosen by The Congressional Club to be the illustrator for the First Lady’s Luncheon hostess gift for First Lady Michelle Obama. Gay’s work includes features in the Lions Gate film Addicted, the BET television series Being Mary Jane and Zoe Ever After, and the OWN series Greenleaf.

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Video
Artist’s Short

The Crooked Room, 2018 by Shanequa Gay