Visual Arts Center of New Jersey Opens Exhibitions Celebrating Gallery Aferro

Hidemi Takagi, Mikua from the «IDENTITIES» series, 2022, Digital C Print on the textile

This February, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey will present exhibitions that celebrate the Newark-based arts organization Gallery Aferro, which recently closed its doors after 20 years. Funded by visionary artists and changemakers Evonne M. Davis and Emma Wilcox, Gallery Aferro was a platform for the exchange of ideas in service of advancing human dignity and beauty, with a focus on visual arts as the vehicle. Opening on February 23, the Art Center’s first-floor galleries will showcase a range of media by past recipients of the Lynn and John Kearney and Sustainable Arts Fellowships.

VACNJ’s Main Gallery features the exhibition Gallery Aferro: Dignity and Beauty—guest-curated by Edwin Ramoran—that showcases works by Katrina Bello, Anjali Benjamin-Webb, Ruth Borgenicht, Amy Faris, Krystle Lemonias, kara lynch, Bud McNichol, Lisette Morel, and Steve Rossi. They are a select group of alumni from fellowships that directly served specific cohorts with support, space, and opportunities. Within this progressive, creative community, the Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity was awarded to women of color, while the Sustainable Arts Fellowship was for artists who are parents. The artwork presented here addresses themes of family, loss, memory, and place. At times visually somber, the work exhibited embodies the central message in Gallery Aferro’s mission statement for the advancement of “human dignity and beauty.”

Concurrently, the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery will feature video and performance ephemera in the exhibition Le’Andra LeSeur and Anna Parisi: Bearing Witness. This exhibition examines the act of bearing witness to oppressive and debilitating systems, particularly those faced by women of color. LeSeur and Parisi, recipients of Gallery Aferro’s Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity, address themes of Blackness, gender, and self-representation. Both artists reclaim lens-based media to dismantle stereotypes and interrogate power structures while creating a space for reflection and healing. In the face of traumatic experiences and oppressive systems, the artists bring beauty, empathy, and healing to bear in their practice.

The Marité & Joe Robinson Strolling Gallery I will highlight a selection of digital collages in the exhibition Kay Reese: 50 Million African Trees. This work is inspired by the struggle and achievements of Kenyan activist and Nobel prize winner Wangarĩ Maathai, the first Black African woman to win the Nobel Prize for the Environment. Featuring fractured imagery and contrasting colors, these works celebrate Maathai’s planting of 50 million trees and her fight for Kenyan women’s rights. Working in a Surrealist vein, Reese, who is an alumna of Gallery Aferro’s Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity, intends to emotionally impact viewers while connecting to local environmental issues.

Finally, the Art Center’s Stair-gazing Gallery presents photography by Hidemi Takagi, a 2022 recipient of the Sustainable Arts Fellowship. She is a community photographer, visual artist, and social practitioner who documents diverse community members in her Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The photograph Mikua, is from Takagi’s “IDENTITIES” series, an ongoing photography installation project that explores issues related to mixed-race identities. Takagi began this project during the COVID-19 pandemic and initially focused on her own family but has since expanded the project to include portraits of diverse individuals in New York City as well as Bayonne, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; and Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan. By interviewing her subjects and encouraging them to wear attire that reflects their cultural backgrounds, Takagi investigates the public and private sides of racial identity.

These shows open on Friday, February 23, and will run through May 24, 2024.

The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is located at 68 Elm Street in Summit, NJ. Visit artcenternj.org or call 908.273.9121 for more information.