"Ten" @ Cindy Rucker Gallery: Jayson Keeling, Curator

Ten is a three day art event at Cindy Rucker Gallery featuring ten curators - each choosing ten artists.  My work was chosen by Jayson Keeling.  The other curators are Eun Young Choi, Ian Cofre, William Cordova, David Andrew Frey, Rick Herron, Colette Robbins, Cindy Rucker, Brad Silk, and Southfirst.    

The exhibition is co-organized by Culturehall.  More at this link.

Nat Creole Magazine Interview with Suzanne Broughel

This is an interview I did with Phillip Harvey in Fall 2007 for Nat Creole Magazine No. 17. It is no longer available online, so I've made it available as a PDF. It was a good conversation and I appreciated the questions.

Here is the link to the PDF:
Nat Creole Interview with Suzanne Broughel

I was happy to see that Nat Creole still has an online presence on Pinterest, where my recent mail art project was pinned. You can see that here.

Mail Art: A conceptual sculpture at Winkleman Gallery

(UPDATE: The exhibition was reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times.  Read the review here.)

Yevgeniy Fiks , who organized this exhibition, asked a group of artists and scholars to respond to his archive of Soviet Russian images depicting Africans and African-Americans.  The results are on view at Winkleman Gallery through Feb. 22, 2014 in “The Wayland Rudd Collection” .

Though it spans decades, the archive is named after Wayland Rudd, an African-American actor who moved to Russia in the 1930’s, to escape the racism he faced in the U.S.

I was very interested in the postage stamp images in the archive, and chose to respond to those. There are Russian stamps depicting Nelson Mandela, a raised Black Power fist, and several variations of idealized, racially diverse groups of children and adults.  I turned those stamp images into stationery letterhead for a mail art project.  Participants were asked to respond – in words or visuals – to the story of Wayland Rudd and its aftermath, in relation to their own identity and our present moment.  Respondents include artists, antiracist organizers, scholars, and performers.

I hand made envelopes for participants to use to mail back their responses in.  Each envelope is a fragment of a large photo of Wayland Rudd and his Russian wife, Paulina Marksiti.  After the envelopes were mailed back to me (stamped with vintage Paul Robeson stamps), I reassembled the photo fragments.  The gallery installation includes this large image – sewn into clear vinyl – alongside a binder of participants’ mail art responses.

Artists in the exhibition: Ivan Brazhkin, Michael Paul Britto, Suzanne Broughel, Maria Buyondo, Zachary Fabri, Joy Garnett, Alexey Katalkin, Kara Lynch, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Nikolay Oleynikov and Arkadiy Kots Band, Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (Gluklya), Jenny Polak, Dread Scott, and Haim Sokol

"Mail Conversation (For Wayland Rudd)" by Suzanne Broughel, 2014

Materials: Laser prints on paper, vinyl, binder containing correspondence.

Top photo: courtesy of Louis Chan    Bottom photo: courtesy of Ray Llanos

Mail Art Participants:         

Yevgeniy Fiks, Megan Malone, Tracy Ann Essoglou, Dr. David J. Leonard, Ph.D., Rebecca Rubin Akan, Oshin Akan, Gretchen Adreon, Dr. Mark Naison, Ph.D., Dr. Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D., Uraline Hagar, Zac Henson, Vaugh Spann, Elizabeth Sturges-Llerena, Anna Berg, VanOs, Carrie Stetler, Nicky Enright, Noelle Lorraine Williams, Tobacco Brown, Dulcie Canton, Elizabeth Morgan, Miles Partington, Jerry Gant, Carl Hazlewood, Mary-Jackelyn Downing, Heng-Gil Han, Russell G. Jones, Jordan Margolis, Kimberly Becoat, Nikki Schiro, Erika Pettersen, Swati Khurana, Mona Kamal, Tattfoo Tan, Anthony Newton, Larry Yates, Edwin Gonzalez, Lawrence Graham-Brown, Coco Lopez , Shantrelle P. Lewis, Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, David Terry, Shani Peters, Elz Cuya Jones, Ray Llanos, Louis Chan, Jaret Vadera  (plus two anonymous participants)