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At the Crossroads: Black Males + Race, Place & Identity
January 20, 2014 @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Elegba Folklore Society is pleased to be among the eight Richmond, Virginia-based arts and cultural organizations partnering to facilitate community-wide conversations inspired by their respective exhibitions and programs that focus on civil rights and social justice beginning in January, 2014.
Elegba Folklore Society is hosting two exhibitions in its Cultural Center that are a part of the collaboration. The first is Body As Art that runs now through January 31. In this series of black-and-white photographs, Thierry Laurence manipulates light, shadow, and water to express an artistic essence of the black male body. An interpretive conversation will accompany this exhibition on King Day, January 20 at 6p.
At the Crossroads: Black Males + Race, Place & Identity
VCU African American Studies Professor Derrick Lanois
King Day, January 20, 6p
Attendees can join a conversation surrounding body + place politics of African American men in the 21st century. Using Thierry Laurence’s photography in Body as Art, the complexities that are facing African American men in today’s society whether social, cultural, artistic, and/or political will be explored. The journey to understand the dynamic and ever changing conditions has to be rooted in history and begin with a discussion of place and identity in Africa prior to enslavement, and currently, then spanning the timeline through and forward to a look at place and identity as expressed in hip hop. Do African American men have a place and identity that is honored, as our cultural DNA and protocols mandate, valued, nurtured and understood or do they serve as the poster child of what is wrong today—criminal, uneducated, shiftless and to be feared/ignored? Professor Derrick Lanois will facilitate this King Day discussion to help us see what has happened historically to “place” African American men in the current dialogue and how to shift the conversation.
On February 7, the Society’s second exhibition in the collaboration, African Root, American Fruit: Paintings by Ronald Jackson, will open with a reception from 5p – 9p during the First Fridays Artwalk. Ronald Jackson paints portraits and figurative works to comment on the identity of African American people and their influence on the landscape of American society. He will give a gallery talk.
Culture, Art and Social Messaging
Artist, Ronald Jackson
February 7, 6p
Jackson will give a talk on the significance of art in African American culture and expound on the implication of his artwork and experience. The evening will also feature a remembrance of the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins which began on February 1, 1960.
Details: 804.644.3900 or story1@efsinc.org. Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center is open Tuesday – Friday, Noon – 6p, Saturday, Noon – 4p and by appointment. Gallery tours are available by reservation.
Among the Yoruba, Elegba is the Orisa or intercessor who guards the crossroads and who opens the roads, bringing clarity out of confusion.
We hope our programs and services are, indeed, road-opening experiences.
Embrace the Spirit!