Dayton Contemporary Dance Company★★★★½ Through Saturday, June 16 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham We are watching. We have been preparing. And we are ready for whatever you can throw at us. That’s the message that Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, which is devoted to the work and performance of artists of color, delivered with an inspiring program […]
Chris Vitiello
Bio: Chris Vitiello lives in Durham and writes for INDY Week on art, music and hockey.Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrisvitiello
Posted inCulture
Dance Review: Anna Barker Burns Toxic Masculinity and Self-Doubt as Fuel for a Work Full of Humor and Beauty
real.live.people: Again, but this time with feeling ★★★★ Thursday, Jun. 7–Sunday, Jun. 10 Living Arts Collective, Durham One way to respond to oppression is to make fists and fight back. That kind of conflict draws attention to a revolutionary cause, but one risks everything in the fight—not just losing it, but also losing oneself in […]
Posted inTheater
Shen Wei’s Greatest Challenge Yet Is to Seek Beauty in an Anti-Opera by Inscrutable Artists Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett
SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS Saturday, Jun. 16 & Sunday, Jun. 17, 7 p.m., $12–$62 Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham www.americandancefestival.org As the legend goes, when the minimalist composer Morton Feldman first met the avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett, he stumbled on a curtain and fell flat on his face before they finished shaking hands. This was […]
Posted inArt
As a New Art and Community Space Run by and Focused on People of Color, The584 Is an Essential Addition to Downtown Durham
Michelle Gonzalez-Green’s elbows are covered with paint and she can’t stop smiling. “I sold my first artwork and we were barely open an hour,” she says at the opening of The AfroBombastic Exhibit, which launched The584, Gonzalez-Green’s downtown Durham design studio and community space, last Friday. “I’ve almost made my first month’s rent.” The584, named […]
Posted inArt
How Did CAM Raleigh Botch Its Handling of the Margaret Bowland Controversy So Badly, and What Can It Do to Move Forward?
MARGARET BOWLAND: PAINTING THE ROSES RED Through Sunday, June 17 CAM Raleigh, Raleigh www.camraleigh.org Let’s dig in. What would it mean if you were a ten-year-old black girl and you came to CAM Raleigh?” This is what Monét Noelle Marshall, a Durham-based performing artist and arts activist, asked those gathered for the pop-up conversation she […]
Posted inCulture
CAM Raleigh Director Gab Smith Speaks About the Margaret Bowland Controversy and the Museum’s Desire to Listen and Learn
This is part two of our interview series related to the controversy over the Margaret Bowland exhibit at CAM Raleigh. For context, an overview of the situation and our first interview, with curator Dexter Wimberly, is here. What follows is our in-person interview with CAM Raleigh director Gab Smith. Check our print edition next Wednesday […]
Posted inCulture
We Think CAM Raleigh Hasn’t Answered the Community’s Questions About Its Controversial Margaret Bowland Show. Curator Dexter Wimberly Says We Just Don’t Like the Answers.
On April 6, CAM Raleigh opened Painting the Roses Red, a solo show of Brooklyn-based artist Margaret Bowland’s paintings that was guest-curated by Dexter Wimberly. Bowland, a native of Burlington, North Carolina, is white; her oil portraits frequently depict black subjects with their faces painted white. Triangle communities reacted strongly to the work, with many […]
Posted inArt
Curator Stacey L. Kirby and Her Collaborators Make a Map of Inclusive Community in Feminine Spectrum
Through Saturday, May 26 Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh www.vaeraleigh.org Before you even enter Feminine Spectrum at VAE, you contribute to it. At the door, Stacey L. Kirby presents you with a “Gender Spectrum Form” on which you make an X somewhere along a dotted line between feminine and masculine end points. It’s an apt, inclusive […]
Posted inArt
In Raleigh, The Jumpsuit Project Artist Sherrill Roland Keeps Turning His Experience of Wrongful Incarceration into an Indictment of the System
SHERRILL ROLAND: ARTFOR(US) Reception: Friday, May 4, 6–10 p.m. | Artist talk with Dasan Ahanu: Thursday, May 10, 7 p.m. Artspace, Raleigh www.artspacenc.org The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the adjacent Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration both recently opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The former is a sacred open-air pavilion of pillars […]
Posted inArt
In Versus, This Year’s Crop of UNC Studio Art MFA Graduates Take a Long View of Immediate Crises
VERSUS: SELECTED WORKS BY THE MFA CLASS OF 2018 Through Sunday, May 13 Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill www.ackland.org Younger generations are sometimes criticized for knowing only the history they’ve lived through, for voicing kneejerk outrage without the nuance historical context brings. But this can’t be said about the young artists in Versus, the Ackland’s […]