The work responds to the 1933 World’s Fair, held in Chicago to celebrate the city’s centennial, which presented a reconstruction of a Mayan temple, and to Robert Smithson’s visit in 1969 to the Hotel Palenque in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. It’s increasingly rare that artists will make works specifically for an art fair, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this new sculpture, titled Hotel Palenque-Chicagos Worlds Fair, by New York–based artist Claudia Peña Salinas. In doing so, he hopes to “build a complex presentation of Blackness” and reconnect people. In piecing them together, Oluseye said he is trying to “reimagine the talismans that Africans would have carried across the Atlantic” just a few centuries ago. Other times, it’s because they share a history. Sometimes, these objects are brought together for aesthetic reasons. These small-scale sculptures can contain objects-combs, strands of acrylic hair, plugs, car parts, and more-from anywhere between two and six countries. (He photographs each object in situ so he has the location data in his personal archive.) ![]() For his ongoing series titled “Eminado,” which means “good luck charm” in Yoruba, the artist has created a series of talismans using found objects (always in black, except for cowrie shells in some works) that he has collected while tracing the path of the transatlantic slave trade, moving from Africa to South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Toronto-based artist Oluseye is also focused on how objects construct memory. Because there are many stereotypical portraits of Black men in the history of portraiture, Patra-Ruga sees his works as a form of “healing wherein I’m wresting them” from those prior depictions. By mixing these two temporalities, Patra-Ruga is also trying to create a new form of documentation for his community. In another drawing, the artist has posed musician Desire Marea as late photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode, who died of AIDS-related complications at 34 in 1989. By depicting Benga in drag at a time when right-wing conservative politicians in the US are legislating against it, “it’s highly political, but it’s highly necessary that I do that.” Patra-Ruga’s works are meant to combat that near erasure, “a testament to the people who get forgotten,” the artist said during the VIP preview. ![]() Unlike these figures, Benga has faded into obscurity. ![]() One of his subjects is Sengalese dancer Féral Benga, who moved to Paris in 1925, became a star at the Folies Bergère (at times performing in drag), befriended Josephine Baker, and posed for Carl Van Vechten and George Platt Lynes. ![]() He starts in pencil, then works in pastel, then tapestry, and finally stained glass, with the portraits evolving along the way. In fact, however, these pieces constituted discrete works onto themselves.Īrtist Athi Patra-Ruga’s stunning portraits of his queer Black femme community, both contemporary members and members from generations prior, are made via a semi-obsessive process. Some of the works brought to the fair by the Cape Town–based gallery WHATIFTHEWORLD appeared to be unfinished.
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