Photo credit: Namsa Leuba

Billie Zangewa (b. 1973, Blantyre, Malawi; lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa) creates intricate collages composed of hand-stitched fragments of raw silk. These figurative compositions explore contemporary intersectional identity in an attempt to challenge the historical stereotype, objectification, and exploitation of the black female form. Beginning her career in the fashion and advertising industries, Zangewa employs her understanding of textiles to portray personal and universal experiences through domestic interiors, urban landscapes, and portraiture. Her earliest works were embroideries on found fabrics depicting remembered botanical scenes and animals from Botswana, where the artist was raised, but she soon transitioned to creating cityscapes, focusing on her experience as a woman in the city of Johannesburg and her personal relationships. These works explored her experience of the male gaze, leading her to begin to think more critically about how women view themselves and what the visualization of the female gaze, through self-portraiture, could look like.

After the birth of her son, Zangewa began making her well-known domestic interiors to explore the shift in focus from self-examination and femininity to motherhood and the home. Often referencing scenes or experiences from everyday life, Zangewa has stated that she is interested in depicting the work done by women that keeps society running smoothly, but which is often overlooked, undervalued, or ignored. Zangewa refers to this as “daily feminism,” which can be considered a contemporary version of “the personal is political.” Through the method of their making and their narrative content, Zangewa’s silk paintings illustrate gendered labor in a socio-political context, where the domestic sphere becomes a pretext for a deeper understanding of the construction of identity, questions around gender stereotypes, and racial prejudice.

Zangewa received her BFA from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa in 1995. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized by Galerie Templon, Paris, France (2020); Afronova Gallery, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2017); Johann Levy Gallery, Paris, France (2008); and Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2005). Recent group exhibitions featuring her work include Alpha Crucis, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2020); I Am … Contemporary Women Artists of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. (2019); Second Life, Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, Morocco (2018); Pulling at Threads, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Making Africa, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM (2018) and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2017); The Half-Life of Love, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2017); A Constellation, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY (2016); Making Africa, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona Spain, and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands (2016); Women’s Work, Iziko National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa (2016); Body Talk, Wiels, Brussels, Belgium; Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden and Frac Lorraine, Metz, France (2015); Making Africa, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain and Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2015); How Far How Near, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014); and The Progress of Love, Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2012).

Zangewa’s work is in several public and private collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. In 2018, Zangewa was selected as the Featured Artist for the FNB Art Joburg Fair.

Chris Wilson splits his time between Baltimore, Maryland, and New York City  and works as a visual artist and a social justice advocate. Through his work, he investigates societal injustices, human relationships, and public policies. His artwork is collected and displayed internationally. He is also the founder of the Chris Wilson Foundation, which supports social entrepreneurs and prison education, including re-entry and financial literacy for returning citizens, as well as art-related programs.

Photo Credit: Miranda Barnes

Larry Ossei-Mensah, MOCAD’s Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces around the globe from New York City to Rome featuring such artist as Firelei Baez, Allison Janae Hamilton, Brendan Fernandes, Ebony G. Patterson, and Stanley Whitney to name a few. Moreover, Ossei-Mensah has actively documented cultural happenings featuring the most dynamic visual artists working today such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Federico Solmi, and Kehinde Wiley.

Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder of ARTNOIR a global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class. Ossei-Mensah is a contributor to the first ever Ghanaian Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennial with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Ossei-Mensah also recently co-curated, with Dexter Wimberly, the critically acclaimed exhibition at MOAD in San Francisco Coffee, Rhum, Sugar, Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox co-curated. Fall 2019 Ossei-Mensah will be curating his second exhibition at the Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at MOCAD Crossing Night: Regional Identities x Global Context with Josh Ginsburg from the A4 Arts Foundation and Jova Lynne, Ford Curatorial Fellow at MOCAD.

Ossei-Mensah has been profiled in publications including The New York Times, Artsy, and Cultured Magazine, which recently named him one of seven curators to watch in 2019. Follow him on Instagram/Twitter at @youngglobal or www.larryosseimensah.com

Mario Moore (b. 1987) lives and works in Detroit, MI. Moore received a BFA in Illustration from the College for Creative Studies (2009) and an MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art (2013). He was recently awarded the prestigious Princeton Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University and has participated as an artist-in-residence at Knox College, Fountainhead residency and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.

Moore’s work has afforded him many opportunities– from multiple exhibitions and featured articles including the New York Times. His work is in several public and private collections which include the Detroit Institute of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem and Princeton University Art Museum. Moore’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions including The Smart Museum, Chicago; the Smithsonian Museum traveling Sites Exhibition; Xavier University Art Gallery, New Orleans; the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; David Klein Gallery, Detroit; and the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York.  He will have a solo survey exhibition at the Charles H. Wright Museum, Detroit, in 2021.

Ian Alteveer, curator of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, poses for a portrait to be used on 82nd and 5th, a web feature. © 2012 MMA, photographed by Jackie Neale Chadwick

Ian Alteveer is the Aaron I. Fleischman Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He recently co-curated retrospectives for Kerry James Marshall (2016), Marisa Merz (2017), and David Hockney (2017–18). He organized three Roof Garden Commissions at the museum for Pierre Huyghe (2015), Dan Graham with Günter Vogt (2014), and Imran Qureshi (2013) as well as the installation of William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time (2013). Before The Met, he was a graduate curatorial fellow and curatorial assistant at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and completed his qualifying exams for a PhD at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2006.

Brett Littman is the Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City New York. He was the Executive Director of The Drawing Center from 2007-2018; the Deputy Director of MOMA PS1 from 2003 – 2007; the Co-Director of Dieu Donné Papermill from 2001-2003 and the Associate Director of UrbanGlass from 1996 – 2001. His interests are multi-disciplinary and he has overseen more than seventy-five and curated more than 20 exhibitions over the last decade dealing with visual art, craft, design, architecture, poetry, music, science, and literature. Littman is also an art critic and lecturer, an active essayist for museum and gallery catalogs and has written articles for a wide range of United States-based and international art, fashion, and design magazines.

Jennifer Schipf is AXA XL’s Global Practice Leader for Art. She has a BA in art history and economics from Georgetown University and a BS in interior architecture from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As AXA XL’s Global Practice Leader for Art, Jennifer is responsible for setting worldwide strategy for client solutions, Underwriting guidelines and ultimate profitability. She’s been dedicated to the highly specialized fine art underwriting market for nearly twenty years and recently helped establish the AXA Art Prize. She previously led the organization’s North American Fine Art & Specie team while also serving as leader of Broker and Client Management for North American Specialty. Jennifer is actively engaged in various arts organizations, teaches fine art underwriting courses and regularly participates in industry educational conferences. She also pursues continuing education classes in painting at the New York Academy of Arts (NYAA) and is an active patron of the NYAA, Tandem Press and other art related organizations.