July 25, 2023
Rashaad Newsome: Hands Performance
First Los Angeles solo exhibition and new work by multi-disciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome
September 16, 2023 through March 2, 2024
On view at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design
Opening reception: Saturday, September 16th, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
ArtCenter Exhibitions is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles by renowned video, performance and collage artist Rashaad Newsome. Rashaad Newsome: Hands Performance debuts a newly commissioned video and multimedia collages representing the artist’s continued exploration of mapping Black cultural production as a form of movement research, data storage and collective wayfinding.
Working with a team of Black Queer ASL interpreters, Los Angeles-based vogue fem performers, flex dancers and motion capture technicians, Newsome's new video, Hands Performance, was created by translating an original poem into a movement dataset. The film's protagonist is Being (The Digital Griot), a social humanoid artificial intelligence that Newsome first envisioned in 2019. As Being transitions seamlessly between signing and dance, their movements express a uniquely Black and Queer non-verbal vernacular. The film combines stunning visuals with a highly energetic score filled with booming bass, synthetic snares, claps and glitches, resulting in a futuristic sonic experience. Presented alongside the film is a selection of collage portraits that further articulate the afro-cybernetic world of the film.
Newsome’s work blends multiple practices including collage, sculpture, film and video, animation, photography, music, writing, computer programming, software engineering, community organizing and performance to create a divergent field that mirrors the intersectionality of their lived experience. Using the diasporic traditions of improvisation, Newsome draws from the world of advertising, the internet, art history, Black and Queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that walks the tightrope between social practice and abstraction. In their work, collage acts as a conceptual and technical means to construct a new visual, performative and literary language that highlights the immaterial and material expressivity in Black American culture.
Newsome has exhibited and performed internationally at institutions including MoMA PS1, the Park Avenue Armory, Studio Museum, and Whitney Museum in New York; Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; Moderna Museet Malmo; the Hayward Gallery and Somerset House in London. Among the many honors and awards the artist has received are an honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut (2023); a LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant (2019); a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2017) and many others.
Hands Performance is a co-commission of ArtCenter College of Design and Somerset House Studios London. The exhibition is also supported by ArtCenter’s Center for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and LACMA Art + Technology.
Related Programs:
ArtCenter MFA Graduate Seminar: Rashaad Newsome
Tuesday, September 12, 7:30 p.m.
Los Angeles Times Media Center
ArtCenter College of Design
1700 Lida Street, Pasadena
This Fall, Newsome will debut new work as part of an ongoing initiative with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). More information will be available this September.
Exhibition Location:
Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery
South Campus
1111 S. Arroyo Parkway
Pasadena, CA 91105
Exhibition hours:
Wednesday through Saturday, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
About ArtCenter Exhibitions: ArtCenter Exhibitions is a program of public-facing curated spaces. Our programs seek to ignite emotional resonance, provoke intellectual dissonance and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking by connecting art and design with the social, scientific, humanitarian and poetic dimensions of our time. Galleries include the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at the College’s Hillside Campus, Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at its South Campus and ArtCenter DTLA in downtown Los Angeles. Additional curated spaces include the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Gallery (HMCT) and Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall located at ArtCenter's South Campus, as well as the Hillside Campus Student Gallery.
About ArtCenter: Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and 10 graduate degrees in a wide variety of art and design disciplines. In addition to its top-ranked academic programs, the College also serves the general public through a highly regarded series of year-round online and on campus extension programs for all levels of experience. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.
Contact:
Teri Bond
Media Relations Director
ArtCenter College of Design
teri.bond@artcenter.edu
626 396-2385
