Artist Alfred Conteh and advisor Jeremiah Ojo. Photo: Funmi Foster (Out The Frame Photography).
A few years ago, the former Atlanta art dealer Jeremiah Ojo was FaceTiming with an artist when he noticed in the background some figural paintings incorporating African fabrics. Thinking the work had potential, he reached out to the artist who made them, an MFA student by the name of Patrick Quarm.
Ojo arranged for Quarm to show his paintings to a Houston-based collector of African diasporan art. Loading a bunch of work into a rental car, Quarm drove nine hours to the meeting which ended with him securing his first art patron.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
As part of the Smithsonian’s third annual (and first virtual) Women Filmmakers Festival, artist, filmmaker, and writer Mariam Ghani will join Saisha Grayson, time-based media curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Sabrina Sholts, curator of biological anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, for a conversation about the history of pandemics. The conversation will include clips of her film
DIS-EASE, which delves into themes of illness and invasion as well as excerpts from her in-progress short
The Fire Next Time, which traces the connection between epidemics and social upheaval from the 1800s to the present. Through the end of the week, Ghani’s feature-length documentary
5 Things to Do This Weekend
Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.
Dec. 17, 2020
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Joiri Minaya’s “Container No. 4” (2020), among the many artworks available at the Future Fair’s Holiday Market.Credit.Joiri Minaya; via Nico Wheadon
For “Treacherous With Old Magic,” one of the presentations at the Future Fair’s virtual Holiday Market, the curator and art adviser Nico Wheadon put together a group of artworks, each selling for no more than $5,000 (the fair’s price cap for pieces), made by female artists of color like Saya Woolfalk and Joiri Minaya. Woolfalk’s screen print “Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination (Plate 3),” which incorporates her signature Afrofuturist elements, is part of a collection that investigates how identities are formed and maintained.