Exhibition on view: Tue, Oct. 10 2023 - Sun, Jan. 21 2024
Opening Reception: Tue, Oct. 10 from 7-9PM. RSVP HERE >>
Featured artists:
Camella Ehlke
David Ellis
Adama Delphine Fawundu
Raque Ford
This exhibition showcases photography, painting, and sculpture to explore remix as a crucial method of creation within the Hip-Hop genre. Remix is a sonic metaphor for the active reinvention of Black life as a means for repairing colonial ruptures. To remix, as put by scholar Katherine McKittrick, is to “engender new contexts with old histories.” Remix frames the artistic works of Raque Ford, Adama Delphine Fawundu, David Ellis, and Camella Ehlke. In the era where Hip-Hop celebrates 50 years of cultural innovation, these four artists illuminate the fact that Black Diasporic remixing has always been a part of a broader survival strategy of storytelling and preserving memory. Remixing becomes an expansive framework for composing new futures with poetic resonance, and much like the experimental remixes found on a Hip-Hop artist’s b-side tracks, encourages ongoing dialogue and constant creative evolution.
Co-curated by Jenny Gerow and Zahra Sherzad in collaboration with Taylor Dews
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Camella Ehlke (she/her)
Based in Brooklyn, New York
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Camella Ehlke is a designer and artist who works with the sewing machine as her paintbrush. She creates sculptures and designed objects characterized by uneven shapes, pillowy textures, and vibrant patterns made of surplus clothing fabric and shoelaces. While male voices have dominated the $300B streetwear industry, before there was Ecko/Complex and Supreme, Virgil Abloh and Ronny Fieg (KITH), there was Triple Five Soul, a clothing label founded in 1989 by then nineteen-year-old Camella Ehlke. Having left streetwear behind her in 2001, Camella continued exploring ways to repurpose textiles, and in 2019, she began a conversation with her friend and advocate, the Off-White™ designer Virgil Abloh, discussing how she could use what Abloh called her “crash of fabric" to reinvent furniture. Her expansion beyond clothing utilizes her unique sewing techniques to outfit furniture pieces with repurposed fashion label fabrics. For example, the Ladies of Leisure chair set is made of surplus fabric from Vigil Abloh’s Off-White clothing brand. Ehlke's artistry is deeply aligned with her goal of finding the intersection between art, fashion, and sustainability.
Starting her company 555 Soul at the age of nineteen, Ehlke has consistently demonstrated dedication to her craft and creativity. In the past and present, Ehlke’s 151 Ludlow storefront has served as both a fashion house and the convening space for musicians and visual artists. In 2001, she received recognition as one of Crain's New York Business 40 under 40, highlighting her outstanding achievements and leadership in the fashion industry at a young age. In 2019, she showcased her remarkable talent in the Guilty by Association Hey What's Up showcase, captivating audiences with her unique artistic vision through a mixed-media furniture collection. Hey What’s Up includes a collaboration with renowned fashion designer Virgil Abloh, solidifying her status as a prominent figure in the industry and showcasing her ability to bring a foundational perspective to the forefront of fashion.
camellaehlke.com / @camellaehlke
David Ellis (he/him)
Born in North Carolina; based in New York City
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In his artwork, David Ellis explores the intersection of urban and rural land and mind-scapes, recorded conversations, music, and kinetic flow. Employing a finely tuned, improvisational style, Ellis delivers visual compositions, sound works, and tightly sequenced moving images that capture a singular search for the connectivity within any given environment. Ellis's process is one of self reflection, debate, and conversation with an ensemble of engineers, writers, artists and musicians, resulting in immersive and multi-sensory experiences shared with audiences over the course of days, sometimes weeks. David has dedicated himself to engineering an alternate universe centered around a sonic, multi-dimensional, time-based lane entitled, “The Rainy Suns.”
Featured solo and collaborative installations and exhibitions include presentations at Rice University Gallery, TX; The Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH; South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art Winston Salem, NC; and the Huntington Museum of Art, WV. His work has been included in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, P.S. 1, Roebling Hall Gallery, Jeffrey Deitch Projects, and Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY. Ellis has held residencies with Savannah College of Art and Design’s Red Gallery, GA; Landmarks at the University of Texas, Austin; and The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the New York 2011 PULSE Prize. Prominent collections include The Margulies Warehouse, The Deutsche Bank Collection, Saatchi Collection, Beth Rudin DeWoody, and Hadley Martin Fisher Collection. Notable commissions include work for Blue Note Records, Nobu Porcupine Creek, CA, Neuehouse, NYC.
davidellisstudio.com / @DavidEllisStudio @therainysuns
Adama Delphine Fawundu (she/her)
Born and lives in Brooklyn, NY
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Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY of Bubi, Mende, Bamileke, and Krim descent. Her distinct visual language centers on themes of indigenization and ancestral memory. She began her career documenting Hip hop culture in NYC in 1993. Her work often incorporates elements of portraiture, symbolism, and storytelling to evoke a sense of connection and empowerment.
Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Her solo exhibition, In the Spirit of Áṣẹ is currently on view at the Newark Museum of Art. She has presented her work at The Tate Modern, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harvard University amongst many other institutions. Her past fellowships and residencies include: BRIClab and the Project for Empty Space, NJ; and she is currently in residence at the Fountainhead in Miami, Fl. Fawundu has received awards from the Catchlight Fellowship, the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, New York Foundation for The Arts Photography Fellowship, and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant, amongst others. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Princeton University Museum and The Petrucci Family Foundation of African American Art, both NJ; Bryn Mawr College, PA; The Brooklyn Historical Society; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; The David C. Driskell Art Collection, College Park, MD; and a number of private collections. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.
delphinefawundu.com / @adamadelphine
Raque Ford (she/her)
Born in Columbia, Maryland; based in Brooklyn, New York
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Raque Ford’s work combines elements of sculpture, printmaking, and writing to explore themes of identity, race, and gender. Through a combination of personal narratives and cultural references, her work invites viewers to question and reimagine societal constructs. In Nighttime Grudge or How I Wanted to Be a Rockstar, Ford displays acrylic sculptures etched with her poetic fragments. As viewers engage with these intricate compositions, they are drawn into a dialogue between the abstract and the familiar, between Ford's personal narrative and their own subjective responses.
Ford has held solo exhibitions at Greene Naftali, 321 Gallery and Shoot the Lobster, all NY; and, Good Weather Gallery, IL, Capital in San Francisco, CA. Ford’s group exhibitions include Albright Knox Gallery, MoMA PS1, Kai Matsumiya, and SculptureCenter, all in NY; Morán Morán in Mexico City, MX; Roberta Pelan in Toronto, Ont.; and Division Gallery in Montreal, Qc. Ford's work has found a place in prominent museum collections, including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
raqueinezford.com / @PunkRaque
Venue Information:
The 3,000 square-foot Gallery in BRIC House has soaring 18-foot ceilings that permit major exhibitions focusing on emerging and mid-career artists and curators.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org