Vox Populi continues its 30th anniversary with Vox XV, its 15th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Danny Orendorff, the Executive Director of N11th Street’s Vox Populi, is so busy mounting July 5’s Vox XV – the gallery’s 15th Annual Juried Exhibition, in this VP’s 30th anniversary year – that he hasn’t a second to discuss its riches.
Sometimes, words just get in the way of the power of the images.
For 30 years running, Vox Populi has been one of this city’s most crucial contemporary exhibition/installation spaces and rotating membership artist collectives that works to support the challenging and experimental work of under-represented artists. Along with live events (such as July 7’s gig with visual and goth-synth artist Λ°C, Alma’s Engine and Saggy), Vox Populi holds monthly exhibitions, gallery talks, performances, lectures, and related programming to support that level of support.
For First Friday, July 5’s Vox XV – the gallery’s 15th Annual Juried Exhibition – Orendorff and the Vox Populi executive board/brain trust have given over the floor (and, of course, its wall space) to guest curators Michael Clemmons and Vashti DuBois, together, the Curator and the Founder/Executive Director of 46th and Newhall Street’s The Colored Girls Museum.
Subtitled “What Makes That Black?” Vox Populi’s 15th annual juried exhibition contains 40+ artworks from 18 artists and collectives all under the banner of inspiration, naming and claiming that is author Luana’s new book, “What Makes that Black? : The African American Aesthetic in American Expressive Culture.”
“What Makes that Black?” is a response to conversations we’re always having. Particularly in the realm of art, of art making and ownership, about the words we use to establish relationships, to trace the origin, to offer proof or empirical evidence of what or who belongs and what or who does not belong,” write Clemmons and DuBois as part of their curatorial statement. “The words may change, but the underlying concerns are the same: What does that thing have to do with me? Why should I care? Whose story does that belong to? And while “what makes that black?” is not a question we asked ourselves when we were invited to curate this show… for certain… what makes that black is our blackness.”
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