Rachel Mason: I Rule with A Broken Heart opens tomorrow @ Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago.
This excerpt was taken from a press release on behalf of the gallery:
"Since 2004, Mason has been sculpting political figures and imagining herself as one of them. The project has extended to live performances, video, albums, and writing. The body of figures began as a project called The Ambassadors, as Mason sculpted herself as an imagined ambassador to wars in her lifetime. For this exhibition, we present a literal timeline of Mason's life as a fictional ambassador to conflicts, in figurines set on a shelf that wraps around the perimeter of the gallery. Mason is interested in using her own personal experiences to address the public experience of these historical, and very real, human beings. Reading a passage in a Shambala Buddhist text led her to think of the leaders as being heartbroken, and her own interpretation is deeply empathetic, attempting to imagine what it might be like to be Saddam Hussein, Jimmy Carter, or Deng Xiaopeng."
Mason will be present to talk about her first solo exhibition in Chicago as well as the release of her new book, I Rule with a Broken Heart and she will be giving a performance on Saturday, February 7th. Click here to view the entire press release.
In addition to Mason's exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund opens today at the Spertus Museum.The works of artists such as Hale Woodruff, Elizabeth Catlett, and Aaron Douglass will be displayed. Here is an excerpt from the description of the exhibition:
"A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund created by the Chicago businessman and philanthropist to foster black leadership through the arts, literature, and scholarship. From 1928 to 1948, the Fund awarded stipends to hundreds of prominent and emerging African Americans artists, writers, and scholars across such disciplines as history, sociology, literature, and the visual and performing arts. A Force for Change will present the artistic and scholarly products of Julius Rosenwald’s support, and will include more than sixty paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by twenty-two Rosenwald fellows, as well as a selection of documentary and archival materials."
On Sunday, February 8th, renowned art historian Richard J. Powell (Duke) will be giving a lecture pertaining to African American art and collecting. The exhibition will be on display until August 2009.
