On view
Garden of Humanity
The VFW Lot, Opa-locka, FL
Curated by James Brazil (Australia), the Ten North Group has acquired two new large-scale sculptures which are now on view in a lushly designed garden in South Florida.Yemaya is a six-foot bronze sculpture and the newest work by contemporary Cuban artist Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy (aka “Diago”). Celebrating the Orisha goddess of the living ocean and the mother of all, the sculpture is intended to be in dialogue with the spirits that accompanied African peoples as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean — the Middle Passage.
The Cedar Men, meanwhile, comprises five works — each six feet tall — by sculptor and performer Jems Robert Koko Bi from Côte d’Ivoire. They aim to tell the history of humanity through the earth’s first inhabitants in Africa. The artist’s work mixes avant-gardist influences, and The Cedar Men pieces — weighing half a tonne each — are sculpted from a single cedar trunk, exploring the forces of nature, ancestors, native land, and exile.
Garden of Humanity is on view through 30 June, 2024.
The Plural of He
Leslie Lohman Museum, New York, NY
New York City’s Leslie Lohman Museum of Art reopens on 15 March with The Plural of He — an exhibition on the life and work of Trinidadian-American poet, critic, activist, and “godfather of the LGBTQIA+ movement” Colin Robinson (1961–2021).
Curator Andil Gosine — who also curated everything slackens in a wreck (2022) at the Ford Foundation Gallery and Kelly Sinnapah Mary (2023) at Aicon Contemporary — specially handpicked Devan Shimoyama, Natalie Wood, Leasho Johnson, Ada Patterson, and Llanor Alleyne for commissioned works on The Plural of He, which runs until 21 July and includes additional works by Richard Fung and Amber Williams-King.
The commissioned works are displayed among other archival objects and respond to records of Robinson’s personal history — from Carnival costumes and calypso music to love letters and agitprop.
Notably, a poem titled The Plural of Me in Colin Robinson’s poetry anthology You Have You Father Hard Head (published in 2016) encourages mourners to “parcel my cremains like wedding cake, small ribbon-tied boxes for everyone to travel home with …”
