Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times.
Chicago's Hyde Park Art Center, 2019
In this solo exhibition at Chicago's Hyde Park Art Center, slipcast objects as cosmic orbs, soundscapes, and NASA video create a dynamic environment as a celestial Afrofuturist landscape for reflection, meditation and healing. With a shotgun house-inspired sculpture as a spaceship that appears to have come from another realm, the work embodies my desire to infuse love and restore dignity to a culture that is troubled with unfortunate manifestations of fear, hate, greed, shame, and a disregard for others.
This exhibition of new work combines elements of architecture and integrates visual art, objects, sound, and video. As in some of the my previous work (Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities, 2016), the house as a powerful symbol, continues my interest in Southern vernacular architecture. In this case, the shotgun house with its origins in West Africa and economy in layout and design becomes a form that appears as if it landed from outer space incorporating elements that suggest a futuristic, transplanetary Middle Passage and migration through deep space. Original soundscapes by Joelle Mercedes placed throughout the gallery are conceived to sound like communications from another world.
Photos: Tran Tran & Tom Van Eynde
Dark Matter Performance
July 11 2019
An original poem was commissioned from writer and visual artist Krista Franklin. It was performed and recorded in front of a live audience in the Hyde Park Center exhibition gallery, where she was accompanied by musician and composer Ben LaMar Gay.
Performance photos: Tran Tran
Now Available through Candor Arts !
Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times
This unique limited-edition catalogue documents the exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times, Folayemi Wilson’s solo exhibition presented at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) in Chicago Illinois, March 31 through July 14, 2019. The catalogue includes a booklet with exhibition photography and essays by Chelsea Mikael Frazier and HPAC curator Allison Peters Quinn, the original poem commissioned from writer and visual artist Krista Franklin, along with a 12” LP of her live, recorded performance in the gallery with musician and composer Ben LaMar Gay on July 11, 2019. Photo: Candor Arts
Dark Matter Checklist
zora-b: 1891.1917.1960. 2006
2019
wood, paint, hardware
silver: 16'h x 12'w x 3"d; gold: 16'h x 12'w x 3"d; black, gold, silver: 16'h x 14' 8"w x 3"d
C.O.L. no(s). 1 - 22
2019
ceramic
sizes: various
Soundscapes by Joelle Mercedes
Spirit Cycles, 2019. 37:15 minutes
A Ballad in Three Parts, 2019. 18:05 minutes
Horn Pulse, 2019. 16:05 minutes
The three soundscapes are audio messages delivered as puzzles. Each piece contemplates the human experience in its stages of transformation, devotion, ambivalence, joy and tension. Through the use of original and appropriated audio samples, digital instruments, melodic loops and field recordings, I invite the audience to locate the puzzles in the space, assemble them in whichever order they choose and allow themselves to experience a nocturnal suffusion in a whisper or in a high pitch tone. – Joelle Mercedes
NASA VIDEO
Moonlight (Claire de Lune), video
Courtesy NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
The visualization uses a digital 3D model of the Moon built from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter global elevation maps and image mosaics. The lighting is derived from actual Sun angles during lunar days in 2018.
An Explosion on the Sun, video
Courtesy NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Images courtesy of NASA/GSFC/SDO
On April 17, 2016, an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This video was captured in several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is color-coded in SDO images for easy viewing.