Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art 
 

Combinations Curatorial Statement: 

 

"COMBINATIONS" brings together a diverse group of interdisciplinary and intergenerational artists working in abstraction by exhibiting pairings of multi-disciplined artwork by artists championing the subversions of boundaries between traditional canonical Western methodologies with the artists' autobiographical histories. 

 

From Nicole Awai, Sable Elyse Smith, and Elia Alba's respective printmaking processes based on conceptual narratives experienced through societal structures to Forrest Kirk, Alteronce Gumby, and Chris Watts' two-dimensional mixed-media paintings centered around historical visual depictions of Blackness abstracted through materials to Tyrone Mitchell and Ye Qin Zhu's sculptural paintings emanating from traditional Eastern mythologies composed of repurposed objects; the common thread between this unique survey of artists is anchored around their common desire to incorporate autobiographical histories into their work while creatively re-appropriating materials to explore new capacities of art and communication. The overall result is that the show brings viewers to the same table centered around critical issues that affect humanity in the 21st century, which are often left invisible, undetected, and uncharted. 

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This exhibition is a glimpse at artists who thread similarities of being and seeing through distinct combinations of materials, realities, and apparent dualities with an autobiographical lens — asking us to reimagine the power of the artist's gaze, self-analysis and the mythologies of histories both personal and trans-personal, hinting toward weaving timeless challenges of the past, present, and near-future."

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— Alaina Simone, co-curator 

*On View in the Legacy Room at SHCMAS

"MVP", an exhibition memorializing the legacy of iconic artist and polymath, Melvin Van Peebles with a selection of sculptures from his Blue Room is on view in the Legacy Room at SHCMAS through September 2023.