Sheherzade, the storyteller from The 1001 Nights, is a master of survival, able to keep herself and her sister alive by entertaining the king (who wants to kill them) with nightly stories that always end on a cliffhanger at the break of day. Like Sheherzade’s tales, the works by thirteen Muslim-American women in Sheherzade’s Gift are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always clever.
Read MoreEach time I visited the space to see “Shotgun Inversion,” fellow onlookers seemed more or less unaware of or unconcerned by its status as a sculptural object. People leaned up against the wall or brushed their fingers against it as they passed, chain-link fence-style. A friend and I hung our arms over the waist-high partition on one side like it was a carnival booth. One visitor wondered aloud what she’d do if she dropped her phone on the other side of the structure.
Read MoreAccording to curator Anthony Elms, Rodney McMillian: The Black Show is an exhibition about transformation. You might prefer to call it an exhibition about flux. It is about fictions, literally literary, with numerous instances of homage to Octavia Butler, and metaphorically historical, as McMillian himself expounded in a preceding interview. It is about mutable spaces, fluid identities, the distance between material and perception, the so-called experience of this ‘reality,’ and the staking out of that reality itself as a constantly undulating landscape.
Read MoreThese meetings have become the bloody battleground between a City Council that supports billboards, and a public that passionately opposes them. The Art Commission has come to bear this undue responsibility, to rule on each proposal on a case-by-case basis. While Council sees East Market Street becoming the “Times Square of Philadelphia,” the path to get there has been a drip-drip of a leaky faucet, with each new proposal drawing intense criticism. But as long the law supports it, the Commission will continue to be the stage of this fight.
Read MoreChipaumire announces, “Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of fucking.” The hare bounding over the ropes. The Champion hurling into them, into the ground. Until he, finally, –well, no, you should see it, you should try to feel it for yourself.
Read MoreThe Colored Girls Museum contains harrowing levels of metaphoric entryways into once traumatized eyes of the black girl. This provincial ghost overcame dishonorable past. Oppressive chains and tyrannical rulers whipped flesh off back and placed choke hold on her mind, body, and soul. Now released yet not entirely freed from damaged control, she tells many stories inherently stretched through visiting artists. Their works adhere to her walls, sleep on her mantles, stand on her floors.
Read MoreWharton student, Charles Li, got in touch to let us know he and nine other Wharton students in a undergrad management class had organized an art exhibit and silent auction for CareLink Community Support Services, to raise awareness of behavioral health issues and to support the clients CareLink serves. CareLink provides services and support to independently-living adults with disabilities in the Greater Philadelphia Area.
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