Figurative Art About Black Identity at Longwood Arts Gallery

(The Bronx, January 5, 2000) Longwood Arts Project hosts Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs and Other Folktales, a group exhibit of visual art curated by Nadine Robinson, who is herself a Bronx artist soon to be featured in P.S. 1's Greater New York.

The exhibition takes place at the Longwood Arts Gallery, the visual arts facility of the Bronx Council on the Arts, located at 965 Longwood Avenue between Beck Street and Kelly Street in the Bronx from February 26th - May 6th, 2000. A public opening and reception takes place from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 26th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturdays 12-4 p.m. and by appointment.

Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs and Other Folktales is the beginning of an eight-book children's series for young black readers, written by Sharon M. Draper. In the series a boy and his friends make a number of discoveries about their African-American history. This exhibit's curator has chosen the book's title as that of the exhibit because just as the fictional characters discover and re-claim their cultural history so do the participating artists. The exhibiting artists treat the folktale as an imaginative expression of the African-American experience and overlay their particular styles, energy and interpretation upon the essentials of their tales.

As well as participating in this exhibit, Trenton Doyle Hancock will be featured in the upcoming Whitney Biennial. His mixed media pieces present the self as an "imprisoned", denigrated character of parody, perhaps the "negro convict" who works on a chain gang or levee camp. Ramdasha Bikceem's large-scale c-prints present self-portraits in which she acts out the debilitating role of the minstrel-songstress or pickaninny. Both artists use minstrelsy and the image of the blackened face coon to deal with issues of stereotypical black representation in the entertainment industry and culture at large. Hancock's "Coon Bear" and Bikceem's performance of a "coon song", the staple of black 19th century minstrelsy, can be seen as attempts to re-claim the minstrel, an entertainment form originating in white - as opposed to black - culture.

Nicole Awai is soon to be featured in P.S. 1's Greater New York. Her images of Barbie challenge European ideals of beauty and commercialism. She presents Barbie as the "ignorant perpetrator", an "allegorical symbol of European/Euro-American, hegemonic influence" and "imposition."

Tony Gray's paintings and drawings of Black Fairies are accessible and direct images of resistance.

Terrance Walker's black animé-inspired characters are "ghetto fabulous" and are featured in incidences that are related through the familiar form of sequential graphic narrative. The tense moments that Walker illustrates refer to stereotyped gender roles of black men and women.

Also, visit the Longwood Cyber Residency Program at www.longwoodcyber.org. The artists participating in its inaugural year are Irina Danilova, Terry Boddie, Khiang Han Hei and Xiomara De Oliver.

[ "Photographs by John Berens." ]

Terrance Walker

Trenton Doyle Hancock

Tony Gray

Ziggy & The Black Dinosaur

Ramdasha Bikceem

Nicole Awai