Fashioning the Black Body

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March 15 – May 4, 2019

projects+gallery / Saint Louis, U.S.A.

David Antonio Cruz, NOTSOPRETTYINTHEFACE,BUTHEDOESITGOOD (2018), Courtesy of the artist and projects+gallery

projects+gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Fashioning the Black Body, a group exhibition curated by Dario Calmese on view through May 4, 2019.

Fashioning the Black Body surveys how fashion, style, and the garment act as devices of investigative storytelling. Featured artists include: Bisa Butler, Soly Cissé, Renee Cox, David Antonio Cruz, Kenturah Davis, Hassan Hajjaj, Basil Kincaid, Mario Moore, Chris Ofili, Fahamu Pecou, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Jacolby Satterwhite, Stan Squirewell, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.

Bisa Butler, Black Star Family, first class tickets to Liberia (2018), Courtesy of artist and Claire Oliver Gallery

Chris Ofili, Afro Harlem Muses (2005), Courtesy of projects+gallery

Basil Kincaid, Special Spot (2019), Courtesy of the artist and projects+gallery

Fahamu Pecou, Black Boy Fly (2014), Courtesy of projects+gallery / Katherine Simone Reynolds, Slow Drain (2017), Photo Virginia Harold, Courtesy of artist and projects+gallery

As a form of identification, self-actualization, and agency, the select artists engage the fashion object from various points of its ontogeny. In turn, Fashioning the Black Body becomes a dialogue about space: the space between black skin and cloth, the space that exists between the historically commodified and fetishized black body, and the space claimed for one’s self-defined identity.

Mario Moore, One Day in the Land of Milk and Honey (2012), Courtesy of the artist and projects+gallery

Kehinde Wiley, After Pontormo’s ‘Two Men with a Passage’ from Cicero’s ‘On Friendship’, (2009), Courtesy of projects+gallery / Micaklene Thomas, I’ve Been Good to Me (2015), Courtesy of projects+gallery

Soly Cisse, Untitled (2013), Courtesy of projects+gallery

Renee Cox, Pan-American Highway (2015), Courtesy of the artist and projects+gallery

“Far from the reaches of frivolity – a domain to which fashion is usually relegated – Black people have continually engaged the fashion object beyond its utilitarian functions into a device of pride, protection, resistance and camouflage,” states curator Dario Calmese.

Through the work of these artists, the Black body is transubstantiated into a semipermeable membrane between the gaze and the contents it holds – and more concretely – the tenuous distances between who we are, who we want to be, and how we are perceived.

Installation View, Courtesy of projects+gallery Photo Virginia Harold

Kenturah Davis, Left: Stack I (2017) / Right: Interface II (2018), Courtesy of artist and Matthew Brown Gallery

Installation View, Courtesy of projects+gallery Photo Virginia Harold

Dario Calmese is an artist working in photography whose practice includes live performance, video, and text. He received his master’s in photography from School of Visual Arts and his bachelor’s in psychology at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. Classically trained in the performing arts, he uses his knowledge of movement, gesture, and psychology to create characters and narratives that explore history, race, class, and what it means to be human.