Artblog’s Imani Roach and Roberta Fallon talked with Taji Ra’oof Nahl about his complex art practice that includes collaboration at its core. Nahl ran his own gallery in Old City from the late 1980s to 2010, where he showed, among others, Terry Adkins’ work. Taji was a friend of Adkins, and their practices both involve music, found objects, and researching under-known African American historical figures. In the interview Nahl tells Imani and Roberta about discovering the Colonial-era polymath, Benjamin Banneker, who became the subject of his installation in ‘Unlisted,’ the big multi-curator, multi-artist show at Icebox Project Space in 2016. We interviewed Taji Nahl at Moore College of Art and Design’s TGMR radio station on Sept. 14, 2017, and the podcast is 37 minutes long.
Read MoreThis is the third year of the New Art Writing Challenge, a community-wide festival about the importance of art writing in Philadelphia. We invite you to submit your writings to our art writing contest. Five cash prizes will be awarded this year and we will be publishing the winning articles and honorable mentions on Artblog and on other publications partnering this year with us. Roberta Fallon and Matt Kalasky co-organized the Challenge again this year. Our partners this year are these great Philadelphia online publications: Curate This, Thinking Dance, Title, and Velvet Glove. Help us shine a light on Philadelphia’s great under-sung art writing community. Participate in the Challenge!
Read MoreCarl(os) Roa is bringing Andean Mountains, his Fringe Festival solo performance, to Taller Puertorriqueño Sept. 7-15, 2017. Roa tells Roberta and Imani that Andean Mountains is about a generational displacement between Latin youth who love anime and manga and their elders’ who love telenovelas. How can the children of immigrants reconcile the various streams of culture coming at them? By repurposing familial culture and making it your own, says Roa. Andean Mountains will have digital elements, movement, and storytelling, in English and Spanish. Get your tickets now, this is going to be great!
Read MoreEarlier this year, Karen Chernick wrote about the missing Royal Theater mural, a history mural on South Street commemorating the legacy of the Royal Theater, a once-thriving black theater where Billie Holiday, among many others, gave concerts. The mural, painted by Eric Okdeh depicted jazz greats who played at the Royal, and neighborhood greats, like Ron Washington, of Ron’s Ribs, a restaurant landmark at 1627 South St., across from the theater. In this podcast, Roberta and Imani Roach (Artblog Managing Editor) speak with Brandon Washington, son of Ron. Brandon talks about the neighborhood, his father’s important role as a community leader and of his own and his brother’s hope to revive Ron’s Ribs in the future in a Ron’s Ribs food truck.
Read MoreEnjoy this full-on tribute to our founding fathers, our eagle, our cats and our heavy metal guitarists. Image by Max Kimbrough, with permission. Check out Max’s Instagram feed for more cat-tastic images. @fade_resistant
Read MoreIn this podcast interview, Matt Kalasky talks with Amanda Buck and Alexa Smith, two of the editors of Apiary Magazine, a beautiful Philadelphia literary publication in print and online, started in 2009 and publishing a wide variety of community voices, in a variety of genres including poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Apiary also includes visual art.
Read MoreIn this From the Vault post from 2011, Libby and Roberta talk with Amze Emmons about his work creating pastel-hued dystopias that are magnetic and enigmatic. Emmons’s works are featured at the Gershman Y right now in a pairing with (also wonderful) work by Lynne Clibanoff. The show is up to August 27, 2017. Be sure to get over and see it.
Read MoreIn this From the Vault post, listen to our 2016 audio podcast with Pap Souleye Fall, a 2017 UArts graduate, whose work is featured at the Galleries at Moore in the 5 into 1 exhibit, up til June 24, 2017. Pap’s performance- and sewing-based works are spiritual and community focused and great.
Read More2016 was a standard year by many measures, with one major difference (ahem you know what that is). Regime change is coming and like most in the art community, Artblog is greeting Jan. 20 with trepidation — and resolve. We are re-committing ourselves to our core mission of diversity — to write about and celebrate the excellence of artists, who are routinely shunned by the mainstream media. The task seems more urgent now than ever.
Read MoreJulie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” is a haunting story of a family torn apart by change. Set in 1902, the film unfolds at the sea island family Peazant’s reunion on the beach called Ibo Landing, where a younger generation talks of moving to the mainland and the older generation fights to stay. The beach is paradise but there’s trouble. A wife is pregnant with another man’s child, a sister returning from the North is a prostitute, another is a Christian religious fanatic. In a movie where characters play symbolic roles, these two returning sisters, shaped by their experience in the big cities, are cautionary examples of something pure having been tainted.
Read MoreWe wish you peace and happiness at this time of family, friends and feasting.
Read MoreJulie Dash’s The Great Migration observes the closing of one chapter of history for many African Americans–life in the unforgiving South–and the beginning of another–an arduous journey North towards an uncertain future. The opening scene of the film, a beach at first light shot in soft muted color, is a fitting metaphor for this transition. A solitary suitcase sits on the sand, a totem for countless histories both individual and communal. At this point of departure where land ends and sea begins, the memories of these emigrants bridge all physical borders, and as the sole remaining traveler, the suitcase is our window into a narrative whose roots run deep and whose branches continue to grow.
Read MoreAll of us at Artblog wish you a sparkling new year! May your glasses be filled with cheer, and may love, joy and peace surround you. We are looking forward to seeing lots of art in 2016 and reporting back to you on what we find.
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Support for Artblog has been provided by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.