LALA MAGAZINE: Celebrating Black Artists at PRIZM Art Fair
Sunday, December 6, 2020
As this year's Miami Art Week comes to an end, another art fair is just getting started with an assortment of offerings highlighting Black artists from around the globe. PRIZM Art Fair, which launched in Miami in 2012, invites emerging and established galleries and artists to share their diverse diasporic perspectives. PRIZM has partnered with Artsy and ARTERNAL to virtually host its eighth edition, which opened this past week and runs through December 21 with the theme Noir, Noir: Meditations on African Cinema and Its Influence on Visual Art organized by the fair’s founder, Mikhaile Solomon, and curator William Cordova.
This year's fair features almost 100 artists presented by 14 galleries, three of which are Black-owned and based in Los Angeles. Read on for LALA spotlights on Band of Vices, Dominique Gallery and Superposition Gallery to learn what each has in store for the fair.
Band of Vices, located in West Adams, serves as a platform for emerging, mid-career and established contemporary artists that matter. Founded in 2015 by veteran actor and art curator Terrell Tilford, Band of Vices makes its PRIZM debut presenting works by international contemporary artists Monica Ikegwu, YoYo Lander, Penda Diakité, Lyndon Barrois, Sr. and Idris Habib. Combined, their artworks represent figurative paintings, collage and a compelling chess set sculpture that captures the tumultuous divide in American politics today.
Dominique Gallery is a storefront, virtual gallery and arts incubator founded by Dominique Clayton in 2015. For PRIZM, the gallery presents the work of five artists: Mustafa Ali Clayton, Khidr Joseph, Denae Howard, Ruth Owens and Alicia Piller. Offering a selection of oil paintings, original collages, portrait photography and sculpture, Clayton selected this group of artists, who work in a variety of mediums, to showcase at the fair in order to demonstrate the strong influence of the African diaspora across multiple genres.
Superposition Gallery is a nomadic pop-up gallery program that was started in LA by artist and curator Storm Ascher and has traveled to New York and Miami. For the gallery’s PRIZM debut, Ascher has curated a selection of premiere video works by Yétundé Olagbaju and Reva Santo, along with a new mixed media glass piece by Layo Bright and paintings by Jeremiah Onifadé. The theme of Noir Noir is cemented throughout Santo’s visual narrative of reflections on her ancestry and the parallel lives of her cousins in Brazil, Bright and Onifadé’s interpretations of their Nigerian heritage through Ghana Must Go bags or Garri and Olagbaju’s musical and contemporary juxtapositions with archival footage of familial lineage.
The full efforts of each of these galleries, now on view virtually at the fair, not only demonstrate a strong commitment to artists of color but also represent the rich art community they have formed in LA with one another and their respective artists. To learn more about that community, subscribe to LALA today.
