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Sonya Clark Exhibition Explores Black Culture Hair has long been used around the world as fiber, as adornment and as signifier of identity. Hair — braided, plaited, knotted, combed or natural — is a Sonya Clark language. Sonya Clark’s artworks reclaim the cultural power of hair and untangle the snarled knots of race, gender, and class. Clark’s carefully crafted artworks explore the power of hair through contemporary art, consciously binding together content and material by using hair and combs as cultural and physical mediums. Self-identifying as an artist of African American, Caribbean and Scottish ancestry, she is deeply invested in the intimacy and tradition of craft as
well as the visual narratives that situate us historically. As Clark says: “In this country, hair is still used to negotiate race.” Entanglements surveys Sonya Clark’s career as a visual storyteller using textile, craft and design, with works that are beaded, woven, piled and plied. The exhibition features sculptures, installations, and photographs made of hair and combs. The exhibit also debuts two new sculptures: Passing and No Passing. In these works, Clark comments on difference, physical borders and the tendency to divide that is present in politics throughout the world. Clark’s artwork affirms and celebrates the prolific creativity of Black culture, while upbraiding racially oppressive narratives. Her work defies expectations of common and kindred materials to ask questions and to tell stories. Through her chosen materials, Clark claims her place in an ongoing global conversation.
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) 750 Marguerite Drive, Winston-Salem www.secca.org 336-725-1904 Sonya Clark: Entanglements is on view through January 7
Inside...
Segmented Marketing Services, Inc. Founder & CEO
Lafayette Jones
Publisher, Urban Call; SMSi-Urban Call Marketing, Inc. President & CEO
Welcome to a special art event at SECCA Aqua Allure This piece was originally made for a traveling show about the West/ Central/South African mother goddess deity Mami Wata—healer, siren and mermaid, often shown with a mirror and comb. These symbols associated with Mami Wata give added significance to Clark’s use of combs, which she started incorporating into her work in 2005. Courtesy the artist
Meet artist Sonya Clark..................... 2
Welcome to another edition of Urban Call. Our companies, Segmented Marketing Services Inc. (SMSi) and SMSi-Urban Call Marketing, a 35-yearold marketing venture, are delighted to partner with the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in a public-private community event which highlights the work of a very talented African-American woman, Sonya Clark. Her work is on view at SECCA. Find her story online (secca.org). We hope your visit will be the first of many to this treasury of art in Winston-Salem. SMSi-Urban Call Marketing, Inc Winston-Salem, NC 27103 E-Mail: SMSiPartners@smsi-net.com SegmentedMarketing.com
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Urban Call
Patti LaBelle
Role Model exhibit
Maya Angelou
Amythyst Kiah
Rosa Parks
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SECCA guest artists Kevin Jerome Everson
Endia Beal
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Sandra Miller Jones
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Sonya Clark: Artist Excels in Telling Cultural Stories Sonya Clark is a distinguished research fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. From 2006-17 she served as chair for the Craft/Material Studies Department. In 2016, she was awarded a university-wide Distinguished Scholars Award. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Mich., and was honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011.
She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first college degree is a BA from Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. where she also received an honorary doctorate in 2015. Her work has been exhibited in over 350 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. She is the recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship, a Pollock Krasner award, an 1858 Prize, Art Prize Grand Jurors
Award; an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, a Red Gate Residency in China, a BAU Carmago Residency in France, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency in Italy, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a Knight Foundation Residency at the McColl, a Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy; a Yaddo Residency, and a VCUarts Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.
“I was born in Washington, D.C. to a psychiatrist from Trinidad and a nurse from Jamaica. I gained an appreciation for craft and the value of the handmade primarily from my maternal grandmother who was a professional tailor. Many of my family members taught me the value of a well-told story and so it is that I value the stories held in objects.” — Sonya Clark
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SMSi-Urban Call Marketing, Inc. President and CEO; Urban Call Publisher: Lafayette Jones Executive Editor: Alan Cronk Editorial Director: Rose M. Walsh Production Manager: Jodi S. Sarver Financial Services: Wanda Courts
Project Manager: Gerry Patton Archivist: Avis Patterson Warehouse and Shipping: Donovan K. Cherry Agent Ambassadors: Alvin Borders, Sharon Lyles and Ellen Morgan
Woven Comb Carpet
Comb Ball
Part of Sonya Clark’s ongoing Comb Series, the black plastic combs that comprise this unusual carpet remind us that textiles and hair dressing are in the mind of the artist, similar art forms. In mass the combs become a velvet- like surface. 2013 Courtesy the artist
Entanglements presents many works in which Sonya Clark transforms the humble comb into sculptures that hang, carpet the floor, and create linear drawings. Comb Ball shows her prowess in exploring the formal limits of such a commonplace object. 2007 Courtesy the artist
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SECCA
SMSi Founding Chair and CEO: Sandra Miller Jones National Project Manager: Constance Harris National Public Relations Manager: Tonya Monteiro
National Logistics Manager: Camille Allen Director, Operations: Tahnya Bowser Director, Financial Services: Roslyn Hickman
Executive Director: Gordon Peterson Head of Audience Engagement: Director of Operations & DevelopAlexander Brown ment: Curator of Education: Katherine White Foster Deborah Randolph, PhD Director Marketing & Public Relations: Debbie Foster Fuchs
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Sonya Clark
Crossroads The West African Yoruba religion is a rich cosmology that has spread following the pathways of the African slave trade. In Crossroads, Sonya Clark directly invokes Yoruba and African cosmology with her use of beads, which have been a staple art making material in Africa since the Neolithic period. 2000 Courtesy University of Wisconsin Madison, Allen Textile Collection
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Artist’s Fibers Include Combs, Hair
Crown
Sugar Eye
The sculptural headdresses that Sonya Clark creates are “metaphorical funnels for the fluidity of cultural heritage and cultural melding.” She was inspired by James Baldwin’s quotation: “we must find our lost crowns and wear them.” 1998 Courtesy the artist
Sonya Clark investigates the meaning of everyday objects that are often overlooked. Sugar Eye represents the all seeing eye on the U.S. dollar bill. The white is made from sugar, a major commodity during the transatlantic slave trade. The iris is made from AfricanAmerican hair to bear witness to those people who were also treated as a commodity. 2016 Courtesy the artist
Hair Craft Project Tapestries Clark hand-knotted photo-based portraits of hairstylists and put them with Sarah Breedlove McWilliams (1867-1919), also known as Madam C.J. Walker, a self-made millionaire who developed hair products for African-American women. 2014 Portraits of CJ Walker and Hair Craft women Collection of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr.
SECCA hosts guest artists
Flat Twist on a Remnant of Idyllic Days Flat twists are a versatile alternative to braiding used in AfricanAmerican hairdressing for generations. Sonya Clark superimposes long flat twists over the idyllic pleasure scenes of bygone days as an allegorical reference to the unseen slaves who made such frivolous revelry possible. 2010 Courtesy the artist
Triangle Trade The transatlantic slave trade, often known as the triangular trade, connected the economies of Africa, America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Indian Ocean. UNESCO estimates that between 25 to 30 million people—men, women and children—were deported from their homes and sold as slaves in the different slave trading systems. Clark imagines the transatlantic slave trade in cornrowed cotton thread. 2014 Courtesy Minnesota Museum of American Art
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Toothless A comb that has lost its teeth indicates that it lost the battle against the hair it was attempting to untangle. In Toothless, Clark demonstrates that fine-toothed combs have gradually lost their bite. 2015 Collection of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr.
Featured as a special guest at Crossroads @ SECCA #018, Amythyst Kiah’s music draws heavily from Old Time sources and is inspired by R&B and country music from the 50’s to the 70’s. Her solo album, “Dig,” is raw and sparse, with heavy feelings that touch on the themes of loss, betrayal and murder. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Amythyst Kiah Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, Edinburgh Blues Festival and was featured on the PBS show “David Holt’s State of Music.” Endia Beal is a North Carolinabased artist, educator and activist whose photographic narratives and Endia Beal video testimonies examine the personal, contemporary stories of marginalized communities and people. Her series of portraits, Am I What You’re Looking For, explores the aspirations and challenges faced by college-age AfricanAmerican women. Kevin Jerome Beal was the debut artist of SECCA’s ongoing 12X12 Salon Series, which features 12 artist from North Carolina, the 12th state. Her work will be exhibited again during the 12X12 Group Show, which opens at SECCA on Feb 1. Kevin Jerome Everson is an Ohio-born, Virginia-based artist whose films frame the lives of largely anonymous working-class African Americans. In the fall of 2014 Everson was featured in a solo exhibition at SECCA, Kevin Jerome Everson: Gather Round. This exhibition included films by Everson shot in the South and Southeast, including North Carolina, that commented on the state of American industry, as well as the creativity and resourcefulness practiced in everyday life.
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Role Model Beyond Beauty art to tour national beauty shows Every month Sophisticate’s Black Hair Styles and Care Guide(sophisticatesblackhairstyles. com) highlights successful black women in the Role Model Beyond Beauty column by Lafayette Jones and co-author Dr. Bridgette Jones Brooks. Their pastel portraits are created by WinstonSalem, N.C., artist Leo Rucker. Among those included are Ursula Dudley, president and CEO of Dudley Beauty Corporation, poet Maya Angelou, singer Patti LaBelle, Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks, Segmented Marking Services (SMSi) founder Sandra Miller Jones, and National Black Theater Festival producer Sylvia Sprinkle Hamlin. The first Winston-Salem exhibit was held at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. Gerry Patton is the senior project consultant from SMSi-Urban Call Marketing. Plans are being made for a national tour of large scale beauty and art shows and other community events in Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Oakland.
View of the historic Hanes home and SECCA galleries from the SECCA lake.
RJ Reynolds High School students exploring Dispatches exhibit
With Open Eyes: The Wake Forest University Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art.
20 Years of Art-o-mat exhibit
About the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) offers the opportunity to experience the world through art. We provide thought-provoking programs and events about issues that impact our contemporary world. We feature diverse artists from all over the world as well as provide a platform for North Carolina artists. SECCA is a vibrant arts center on 32 acres of land, which includes nature trails, private lake, and rolling lawns. We offer tours of the museum, family events, educational programs and many other events throughout the year. Admission is free for everyone.
SECCA is an affiliate of the North Carolina Museum of Art, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. SECCA is also a funded partner of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. The James G. Hanes Memorial Fund and private donations provide additional funding.
The Role Model column is featured in each issue of Sophisticate’s magazine.
Patti LaBelle Entertainer
Sonya Clark: Entanglements: Program Calendar All activities are free and open to the public. Teacher Night: Fiber! Nov. 9, 4:30-8:30 p.m. Join educators from around the region for the annual teacher night. Artists will conduct workshops and demonstrations in the fiber arts. Talk: Andrew Gurstelle Nov. 30, 6-8 p.m. Andrew Gurstelle, director of the Wake Forest University Museum ofAnthropology, will discuss the Yoruba connections to Sonya Clark’s artworks.
Spoken Word and Spirituals: Responding to Sonya Clark Dec. 9, 3-5 p.m. Join us for an afternoon with Authoring Action teens performing spoken word poetry responding to Clark’s artwork and the Voices of God’s Children, a community multi-racial choir singing historic African-American spirituals.
Maya Angelou Poet and author
Sylvia Sprinkle Hamlin Executive Producer, National Black Theatre Festival
Role Model Beyond Beauty Exhibit—Opening Dec. 10, 2-5 p.m. On view through Jan. 7. Rosa Parks Civil Rights Icon and Activist
Sandra Miller Jones Founder, Segmented Marketing Services Inc.