Talking about how we process the world and our place in it through the visual arts rather than the spoken word can lead to some curious places. The people, things and ideals we value and the reasons why they’re so meaningful to us take on new dimensions when expressed through painting, sculpture, photography and film. Hyde Park Art Center’s newest exhibition, Mark Me, Too: Five Artists slips into that kind of experience in a way that feels very intimate and pure; ultimately leaving you with the impression you’re in direct dialogue with the sentiments that fuel each of the artists whose works are being represented.
The exhibition is broadly linked to and takes inspiration from a line in Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, where one character, Sethe, wanting to establish a more visceral connection with her mother, asks her to “mark me, too”. The mark her mother wears is one more akin to a branding by fire that was sometimes used to indisputably identify the enslaved. In the context of the exhibition, the act of marking morphs into the creative fruit of legacies that are weighted by both love and trauma. Personal storytelling through art lies at the exhibition’s core and fuels its intrigue.
The exhibition features artists of color whose cultural roots extend around the world, from the state of Maryland to Nigeria, and from the Philippines to the Seychelles off the east African coast, sometimes bring the specificity of place to the works they have on display. More often you see the deep-seated impact their places of origin have had on the artists themselves; how they’ve been marked by the lives they’ve lived and their broader experiences.
Drawn to the symbolic nature of eggshells, their intrinsic delicacy and the way they embody renewal, Ciarra Walters has been experimenting with them for years to see how they could be used in an artistic context. Her Fragility Suits (2024) is one culmination of that artistic search. Shards of eggshells are applied to nylon stockings adapted to be worn as bodysuits. Seeing 12 of them lining a wall together is a confrontation with translucent perishability, but there’s also a surprising note of strength and endurance that shines from the display. Extending the concept and transferring it to film, Walters also records her and her siblings wearing the suits. In Eileen’s Daughters, dedicated to her late mother, Walters and the other women in the film hug one another, crush eggshells in their hands, press themselves against the wall to amplify the ephemeral nature of an empty eggshell. That reminder of impermanence helps to bolster and entrench our appreciation for the steadfast and reliable.
You can detect a playful intellectualism in Lex Marie’s art that uses found and sometimes unusual materials like receiving blankets to construct her art. In a few of her pieces, she riffs on the American flag to show how it can be used to envelop those who feel shunned or neglected by it. Her From Roots to Split Ends is particularly notable for its reinterpretive power. From a distance you see the flag’s red, white and blue in a subdued presentation. Close inspection reveals the flag’s “cloth” is a cascade of woven braids, African hair weave style and enhanced with distinctive ornamentation, fashioned as a national emblem. A wonderful example of how penetrating imagination can enliven cultural awareness.
Even more subtle, Lola Ayisha Ogbara's approach, at least in Mark Me, Too, focuses on gender, youth and heritage to project her outlook on who and why she is. In the abstract piece Bubblegum, it’s all about the pulsing neon pink color and the strands spilling from the piece that call to mind the jump rope girls played during childhood to immerse themselves in speed and dexterity. All the while forging bonds that lasts lifetimes. Ogbara’s other works touch on similar themes as well as some that comment on how beauty is expressed.
Lisa DeAbreu travels across mediums as she contemplates all the forces and influences that mold her perceptions. Born in the US with Caribbean ancestry, an Old-World essence permeates her art. Her paintings like Come (Let me comb your hair) settles comfortably in the past to portray an ironclad familial closeness that reads as a lost, but still desirable, relic. Switching to three-dimensional art, Forgotten and Foreseen uses wrought iron, woven cotton and dollies to fashion a precarious hammock that, despite being created just a year ago, looks as if it has stories upon stories to tell from some distant past.
Photography is the artistic language Natasha Moustache communicates with so impressively. The people and places captured in their lens expands our understanding of the wider world. Their images hold with an unassuming majesty that invite us in and leave us curiously spellbound. In Mark Me, Too most of their pictures are of the Seychelle islands and the people who live there. For Moustache, the islands are their family’s land of origin. In the exhibition, the artist’s mother receives considerable attention. Standing alone knee high in the Indian Ocean, framed by a magnificent blue sky and the vast watery expanse, Moustache’s mother is a pillar of regal strength and wisdom. But there’s something else radiating from her eyes. Something that looks to be a knowledge of history unique to this independent African country whose population is overwhelmingly made up of Creoles descended from the mixing of Europeans and African slaves. It’s a legacy Moustache’s photographs make you hungry to explore more deeply.
Modest, but probing deep subjects in interesting and uncommon ways, Mark Me, Too: Five Artists proves to be an artistic way station full of subtle rewards.
Mark Me, Too: Five Artists continues through December 14 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S Cornell Ave. For more information, go to the art center website.
Support arts and culture journalism today. This work doesn't happen without your support. Contribute today and ensure we can continue to share the latest reviews, essays, and previews of the most anticipated arts and culture events across the city.
