The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists
April 8 – November 1, 2015 "Curated by the internationally acclaimed writer and art critic Simon Njami, this dramatic multi-media exhibition reveals the ongoing global relevance of Dante Alighieri’s 14th century epic as part of a shared intellectual heritage. Including original commissions and renowned works of art by approximately 40 of the most dynamic contemporary artists from 19 African nations and the diaspora, this visually stunning exhibition will be the first to take advantage of the museum’s pavilion and stairwells, as well as galleries on the first and third floors. Celebrated artists like Kader Attia, Wangechi Mutu, and Yinka Shonibare explore the themes of paradise, purgatory, and hell with video, photography, printmaking, painting, sculpture, fiber arts, and mixed media installation. In so doing, they probe diverse issues of politics, heritage, history, identity, faith, and the continued power of art to express the unspoken and intangible." Smithsonian National Museum of African Art 950 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20560 202.633.4600
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Road, inspired by Cormac McCarthy's book, The Road. Marcelina Amelia. Visit the artist, click here.
The Lady of Cao*
*A female mummy, baptized the Lady of Cao, with complex tattoos on her arms, has been found in a ceremonial burial site in Peru. Archaeologists say is one of the best-ever relics of a civilization that ended more than 1,300 years ago. I The Chicama valley. A huge burial site scoured by grave robbers for centuries, but even the conquistadores never discovered the sealed entrance to her grave. The jampiri. Stalks the grove. Naked. Chants the apu. Misty curtains rent for the gods. Stone placed on stone placed on stone. II Warrior lady. Ceremonial items, jewelry and weapons, the remains of a sacrificed teenage girl. Forensics say the lady died from eclampsia. Yachaia, my Yachaia. Large eyes, locking into mine while she drinks. Knows the shining path we’ll follow. Hand-in-hand like children. III Her royal lineage gave her the power. El Brujo gave her the child. Her belly distended. It’ll be soon. She rubs her tattooed arms, shivers, pulls her elaborate wrap tight. It’s cold in the palace. She doesn’t know it, but her year is 444 AD. Feels the child move. This will be her first-born, probably her only one. At 25 she’s no longer young. The pain. I’ll bear it. Heavy, slow. Winter in my bones, my flesh. Won’t accept. Yet. The Chill. VI The year is 2011 Gregorian. In Jequetepeque valley an old man, stooped, grey, wizened, inhales from a heavy black bowl in which he prepares his steaming magic. Pure gold under the black, it once belonged to the one of his blood. He’s the last of a noble line. He’s the last of the jampiris. Barren women consult him. Rosmarie Boehm A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the UK, well over 100 of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014, a new poetry collection is in the process of publication in the US. Evolving Sirenian
Everything in the ocean becomes something else. Colonies of coral, once a soft carpet of color, become brittle and white, the stuff of island sand. The octopus embodies this quality of change. Exactly the shape of whatever it needs to be, the octopus pours itself between two rocks. In the painting, its tentacles curl like breakers, tangled kelp fronds. Caught in the act of transformation, the octopus takes on the blue and orange of a large carcass, flesh peeling in flakes from its side. Then it disappears, skin puckering in mock putrescence, eye gaping like a wound. No wonder sailors wandering at sea once mistook this creature for a woman, hair trailing behind her in the green-blue surf, singing the most beautiful song. Robbi Nester Robbi Nester is the author of an ekphrastic chapbook titled Balance (White Violet, 2012) and other poetry collections. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Broadsided, Silver Birch Press, Poemeleon, and Inlandia. The Locusts
Eating their way through layers of brick, the locusts emerge at last from centuries of rest into the early April light. Last time they saw the sun, the city was a field. No pavement and no house, nothing but wind and waving grass. Speckled with scarlet violet, and blue, as bright as blooms or bits of glass, they clamber on their jointed legs, all spikes and ends, as if seeking the book whose ancient margins they once occupied, the brush that laid these pigments on the parchment page. How like us they have grown— their brows arched in surmise over eyes as human as my own. Tiny fingers clenched, their voices rise in shrill surprise, inquiring “Where? Where?” as their antennae taste the air. Robbi Nester Robbi Nester is the author of an ekphrastic chapbook titled Balance (White Violet, 2012) and other poetry collections. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Broadsided, Silver Birch Press, Poemeleon, and Inlandia. Kandinsky “Composition IV” -What is true?
I hear colour, too understand how sight and sound confound the senses when I see music and feel sculptures as you hear compositions abstracted not representing anything other than what pleases you as you fall to your knees and weep to see your own painting on its side. I would have guided you to John Lackey but he wasn’t even born before you died and I cringe to remember commenting on background music in Lackey’s film as whiny, not knowing it was his own and take heart in his gracious assurance that anonymity breeds honest criticism I know that to be true, as well. Phish scorned as pissing in audience’s ears I can’t applaud enough when Trey forgets lines much like Jerry Garcia often stumbled and we loved him even more for it, that is true. But I wonder what mantra to chant to write a sonnet and what wounds behind closed doors to muffle so that I can even write one good line before I’m done. B. Elizabeth Beck This poem is from B. Elizabeth Beck's manuscript, Painted Daydreams. The writer, artist and teacher is the author of two poetry books, and founder of central Kentucky's Teen Howl Poetry Series. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Ars Poetica- “Writer’s Block (Go Around)”
I will, John Lackey, I will (go around) because words pool within my mind and stones catch ideas I want to hold between my teeth. So, instead I gnaw on the end of my pen not waiting for the flow. I will accept a trickle/force scribbles even when leaves clog autumnal memories, I will cough/sputter nonsense (around and around) on the page until the dam bursts and ideas flood. Poets need to walk barefoot in Kentucky rivers and suffer/risk toes whitened/wrinkled if only (just) to feel/shock the senses because writing is not (just) a senseless task even as I wonder what I’m really doing with my time borrowed against the ticking of the clock behind my left shoulder. I have no choice but to (go around). B. Elizabeth Beck This poem is from B. Elizabeth Beck's manuscript, Painted Daydreams. The writer, artist and teacher is the author of two poetry books, and founder of central Kentucky's Teen Howl Poetry Series. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Love, a Painting
The painting is divided, two halves exactly alike; in each, the lovers are lying down suspended in a misty white. This is how it was with us in our room of candles and darkness where walls flew off like ravens, like the lovers in this painting held in weightless space where anything, even the brush of a leg or face could collapse the air beneath them and make them fall. The painting is divided, two halves exactly alike; as if this painting captured a certain point in time when the same painting painted itself in each lover’s mind; this is how it was. Sally Bliumis-Dunn Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Talking Underwater and Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2007, and 2010). She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Armonk, New York. The Annunciation
Mary twists to stare at the intruder, an angel, no less. His plaid-lined cape flutters, lifted by a breeze that touches nothing else. Waxy lilies, white and virginal, spring from a vase. She turns away, clutches her robe of ultramarine and gold across her breast as if she’s been caught undressed. She’s stuck her thumb into her book so she won’t lose her place. Her mouth turns down. She sees it even now— the birth out of town in dismal lodgings, swaddling clothes damp and odorous, husband resentful of a child not his own, the embarrassing ruckus in the temple, the motley gang of followers, the agonizing and ignominious death, the sponge soaked in vinegar. Ruth Bavetta My poems have been published in Rhino, Rattle, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, North American Review, Spillway, Hanging Loose, Poetry East, and Poetry New Zealand, among many others, and are included in four anthologies. I have published two books, Embers on the Stairs (FutureCycle Press),and Fugitive Pigments (Moon Tide Press.) Two more books, No Longer at this Address (Tebot Bach) and Flour, Water, Salt (FutureCycle Press) are forthcoming. |
The Ekphrastic Review
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