Last Thursday, the Bradbury Art Museum opened three new exhibitions: “Contemporary Classic,” “Overture” and “Meaningful Disruption.”

Contemporary Classic

This exhibition brought together a group of five artists whose work aims to reference and revisit different visual narratives throughout art history. The particular focus was on classics from art history that had prominent impacts, both positive and negative, on future generations of artists. 

Angela Fraleigh, current Professor of Art at Moravian University, said her work aims to create a more complex and inclusive lineage for women. 

“My work weaves together realism and abstraction in layered compositions that range from intimate portraits to monumental figurative paintings that reimagine and re-signify women’s roles in literature, art history and contemporary media.” Fraleigh said. 

Klaire Lockheart, an artist from Vermillion, South Dakota, said she aims to counterbalance arbitrary gender roles in art history through her own invention; the “brodalisque,” which combines ‘bro’ with ‘odalisque,’ which is an enslaved woman or concubine. 

           With this, Lockheart said she hopes to challenge traditional patriarchal values of Western civilization. 

“I painstakingly paint masculine men in the languid poses of odalisques and Venuses,” Lockheart said. “If my brodalisques aren’t praised for their form, beauty and esoteric artsy themes, then the worth of the countless depictions of nude women should be reevaluated.”

Vitus Shell, a mixed-media collage painter from Monroe, Louisiana, said that his work is geared toward the black experience and aims to bring different generations together. 

“I strive to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations by exploring and uncovering factors that contributed to the unfortunate relationship breakdown between the two,” Shell said. 

Ayam Yaldo, an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal, focuses on objects and artifacts to explore different concepts like reconstruction and transformation. 

The exhibition is titled “Impossible Sites”, which is a single-channel video with voice-over from the artist. Yaldo uses a green screen as a metaphor for a ‘magic carpet’ that allows her to ‘visit’ sites and artifacts that are otherwise inaccessible. The imagery ranges from photographs of historical sites to footage from the Gulf War when Yaldo was a child in Baghdad. 

Yaldo said she aimed to reconstruct lost, destroyed and displaced ancient relics from the Middle East due to years of war and western occupation. 

Carlos Gámez de Francisco, an artist born and raised in post-revolutionary Cuba, said that his work has been heavily shaped by his education that was heavily governed by the Russian Academy. 

Francisco said that the presence of censorship in contemporary art and the limited access to information of his upbringing has driven him to his “near-obsession” with the past that translates into figures, scenarios and the recreation of his own stories.

“I am more fascinated by altering history than depicting it accurately,” Francisco said. 

Overture

Benry Fauna, a New Orleans based artist, titled his exhibition “Overture,” after the music that traditionally plays before a ballet or opera. Fauna described the artwork included as selected compositions across his portrait practice. 

Fauna said he finds a certain empowerment and sincerity carried throughout the longevity of portraits. 

“I began to collage, reshape and sculpt portraits as a way to ruminate on the relationship we have within our own image,” Fauna said. “Every fold of fabric shifts our perspective like a heightened emotion obscuring our reality.”

Meaningful Disruption

Chantal Lesley, a conceptual photographer living and working in Austin, Texas, is a first- generation American raised near the U.S-Mexico border by Peruvian and German parents. 

            She said she found herself at the crossroads of four different cultures and her work is a way to turn the colonial gaze upon itself and regain her power and agency. 

“I create a visual narrative that reflects the loss of ethnic roots and explores the isolation and confusion felt from multiple cultures, a metaphor for the in-between,” Lesley said. 

All three exhibitions deal with issues of identity and the place of various groups throughout world and art history. 

The exhibitions opened Sept. 12 and will stay open through Nov. 20.

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