Past Exhibitions + Programs

Nafis M. White: Freedom Is My Favorite Position

February 4 - March 18, 2023

Curated by André Bloodstone Singleton.

Self Portrait. Courtesy of Nafis M. White. 2020.

  • Nafis M. White is an interdisciplinary Artist whose recent body of works are created from objects commonly found in beauty supply stores, industrial sites and the seemingly limitless horizons of our global and political landscapes. Through weaving, hairdressing, sculpture and installation, White centers the uncanny audacity of self-affirmation and love by means of repetition as a form of change. White is inspired by raw materials and their transformative properties and abilities to tell dynamic stories when in congress. White’s formal training is in sculpture, printmaking and digital media. She uses concept as anchor and medium as message in her work moving within conceptual and durational realms. Community engagement, beauty, freedom and the political root deep in White’s work. Nafis lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

    White is represented by Cade Tompkins Projects.

  • With community there is nothing that we can’t do. There is no obstacle that is too difficult to face and overcome. Renaissance Wombxn, Nafis M. White, has been everything that constitutes the undisputed truth in both the modern and ancient world for as long as I can remember. She is the embodiment of a loving community member especially beginning with community of self. From revered art school backgrounds, Nafis of RISD and me of The New School, we immediately had a deep Soul knowing of things seen and unseen, spoken and unspoken. Our conversations have been and continue to be pure and complete nourishment from our root chakras to our crown chakras. We live in a society that is obsessed with content and creation yet hates the Creatrix and is completely removed from the importance of being content and truly doing the inner engineering. Hence, it is a profound multi-sensory pleasure and honor to bear witness inside and outside of the studio to the gifts that Nafis bears and unselfishly offers to us. Nafis’ Spirit of Intimacy is not and has never been pedantic or performative but is a gift to be held with true tenderness and reverence. To share her love, her body, her Spirit and self should not be taken for granted and must be approached with a sincere heart, eyes and Soul. To live takes courage. Nafis is a living artist, heavy on the living, and to know her is to love her. I give thanks to keep this circle unbroken and to stand in the threshold celebrating the courage it has taken and the creative muscle required to share such tenderness with all of us who are invited into this sacred space of hers.

  • André Bloodstone Singleton is a Bay Area based multi-disciplinary healing/sacred artist, community educator, curator and death midwife. His work celebrates the African Diaspora and humanity. He is a thread within a fabric of pioneers on a mission to unite people from an abundance of cultural backgrounds through the healing and sacred arts. Continuously enduring the long term side-effects of a terminal illness and embracing his gift of sexuality as a Black gay man in a very anti-Black and homophobic society has empowered Singleton to approach life with a fierce determination to be free and embracing of his truth while listening to others and inspiring others to get and stay free mind, body, heart, Soul and Spirit. Kujichagulia, Kuumba and Umoja are his guiding principles. Singleton’s work continues to inspire courage, pride, and vulnerability, encouraging people all over the world to respect one another so that our communities might remain enriching for us all. He firmly believes in the words of precious and beloved Ancestor Malidoma Patrice Somé that y/our wound is y/our gift.

  • André Bloodstone Singleton, without question, is the person whom I asked immediately to be my Curator when I was invited to present my work at CCA for a Winter showing. When thinking about the alchemy of an exhibition, who you choose to be the conduit between the Artist, their work and the exhibition space is critical. André embodies everything that this body of work signifies, he is Love incarnate, he is Spiritually connected between realms of Heaven and Earth, he is a Healer and devout Believer in the good of Humanity. I knew that I could trust André with my work and process and be powerfully present with him to receive his words, wisdom, ideas and gentle nudges of encouragement and affirmation. We are collaborators in the deepest and most powerful sense, a Brother and Sister working in tandem, working with Spirit, working to uplift others and bathe them in the presence and radiance of the glow of our love and survival.

    André is an Artist in his own right, and to be able to spend precious time with him in Oakland and San Francisco and to dedicate hours and hours of powerfully honest and Earth shaking discourse between us has fortified my life and art practice and created the roots for a wondrous exhibition that radiates sensuality, prowess, self-determination, empowerment, gratitude and freedom. A good Curator puts on a show, a great Curator changes landscapes and André is a man rooted in greatness.

  • Exhibition reading list, curated by White and Singleton.

About Freedom Is My Favorite Position

Curatorial statement from André Bloodstone Singleton:

What does it mean to be at the intersection of submission and reclamation, to exist on the sweet peripheries of life and death, drinking the intoxicating nectar of memories made while exploring fertile landscapes signifying what is and welcoming the unknown with open arms and upturned hands? Offering their audience a veritable communion for the senses, Nafis M. White bridges the Ancestral, Sensual, Spiritual and Experiential in this monumental exhibition of sacred ritual objects, sculptures, video, installations, performance and digital media. White embodies pleasure as an energetic highway through which viewers must travel while evoking Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic; the Erotic as Power to honor the facets of delight that come from unapologetic and self-assured ecstatic acts of resonant self-love and abundant pleasure.

Known for her immersive and accumulative work, White adorns the exhibition walls with her Oculus sculptures, powerful incantations made entirely of synthetic hair held in place with Bobby pins, that honor her Ancestry, weaving together the traditions of African and African American hair braiding with that of Victorian hair wrapping. Looming large within the space is an interactive work titled Self-Portrait, composed of dozens of ornate glass jars filled with black licorice varieties from around the world which viewers are invited to consume as they imagine what it is like to walk in someone else’s experience. Also present is a series of photographs titled The Hunger Series, created during quarantine in 2020 in which the Artist is seated at her dinner table secured in a corset, surrounded by red foods that are pulsatingly ripe and full of life, a visual poem depicting desire and containment, fertility and pollination, hunger and satiation.

“Pleasure reminds us to enjoy being alive and on purpose... Pleasure—embodied, connected pleasure—is one of the ways we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world. Pleasure helps us move through the times that are unfair, through grief and loneliness, through the terror of genocide, or days when the demands are just overwhelming. Pleasure heals the places where our hearts and spirit get wounded. Pleasure reminds us that even in the dark, we are alive. Pleasure is a medicine for the suffering that is absolutely promised in life… Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.”

- Adrienne Maree Brown, excerpt from Pleasure Activism

Artist Statement from Nafis M. White:

What is hidden and what is visible? What do we allow to be legible? What is it like to walk in the shoes of others and know/learn/consider their pathways in the world? What does it mean to surrender to the experiential? A celebration of fluidity. Risk and receiving. Ecstasy and emergence. Coding and Cooperation. Concealment and utter pleasure. Release and trust. Safety and exploration. Decadence and transcendence. 

This exhibition is the first time that I am opening my private life to share aspects of myself with an audience in a deeply personal way that unites my spiritual practices, sensual and artistic in one powerful immersive narrative. The works presented in this exhibition encapsulate the freedom I experience living my truth boldly as someone who exists between realms, as a mixed race person, as a queer person, as an Artist and conduit/synthesizer of the world, as a conjurer/guide/good-Ancestor. 

I have, over the last few years, given myself permission to explore deep spiritual rituals, healing energy transferences across family and friends to build with others in powerful and prolific ways and generative sexual partnerships of many varieties . My lovers are many, my travels extensive, my curiosity and desire for knowledge unmatched with previous seasons of my life. I am allowing myself to discover more as I pour into my work and pour over life in a way that the me of previous decades was unable to do or even imagine. The restraint, pleasure and overflow of artistic input/output including reclamation, ancestry, love, joy, empowerment, boundaries, decoration & adornment, beauty, release, kink, exaltation, reverie, trance, suspension, fluidity, freedom and pleasure loom large in my work and process. 

Mariana Ramos Ortiz: Contra viento y marea

October 8 - December 8, 2022

Contra viento y marea features new works by printmaker and sculptor Mariana Ramos Ortiz.

Ramos Ortiz is an interdisciplinary artist working between San Juan, Puerto Rico and Providence, Rhode Island. Their recent articulates relationships between legibility as a remnant of colonialism, play as a tactic for resistance, and how these strategies construct the experience and perceptions of the colonial subject and landscape.

Ramos Ortiz graduated with a BA from the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras in 2019 and received an MFA in 2021 from the Rhode Island School of Design. They have attended residencies at the Independent Studies Program of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, Brown University, and the Wassaic Project. Ramos Ortiz is a recipient of the MASS MoCa Puerto Rican Artist Fellowship, and the Kala Art Institute Fellowship, among others.

Contra viento y marea is curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King and Natalie Cohen.

Lead support for the artist’s project in this exhibition is provided by an Project Grant from Interlace Grant Fund.

VIGNETTES

August 11 - August 21, 2022

Ahead of our official opening, Rhode Island-based artists and organizations took over our space for a series of pop-up events, exhibitions, and performances in our space: Vignettes.

Featuring paintings, drawings, and collages by Carmen Ribaudo, live painting by Tapia, “Stitch & Stay Awhile,” a collaborative artwork and performance by Heather McMordie, and Earth/Body, a group exhibition curated by Izzy Uliasz and Tayla Roberge.

AD SPACE:

June 6 - July 3, 2022

AD SPACE is a solo exhibition featuring local artist Andrew “Moon” Bain, presented across thirteen billboards in Providence for the month of June.

Bain is a visual artist, producer, songwriter, and musician. His work explores diasporic experiences, current events, earth crisis, and related social imbalance, while uplifting the spirits of the future and celebrating the profundity of the natural world. Born in Seattle, Bain holds a BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and has worked extensively throughout Europe and the Caribbean. Bain’s visual art is represented in numerous private collections and museums.

Find AD SPACE at the thirteen locations mapped here.

The exhibition is supported by PVD Fest Ideas and the Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism.

  • Bain wrote of his exhibition:

    This project is a dream come true. I was raised in a city, in a pre-digital era sans cellular smart phones and experienced the power of advertising in public spaces. I was all over town by bike, skateboard, car and city bus. A whole lot of the metro bus. Bombarded by billboards, banners, business signs, bus stops and neon.

    Being given the key to that influence, awareness, persuasion and information while synthesizing with art, color, spirit and design feels like an opportunity to capture and honor the audience. In plain sight and totally buried. Installing a consistent visual language around a vast spread of neighborhoods, concrete, highways, roads and cultural boroughs is a challenge that opens up the entire town as a doorway, a large new space that is multi-dimensional yet tangible. I see an urban canvas that exists in plain sight, marked into the landscape. Envisioning a visual web of connected messages, energy, ideas and imagery.

    Jonny Skye, curator of AD SPACE, wrote:

    As the pandemic pulled us in, it did not deter us from gathering in open spaces, to rally, resist and rejoice. 'Public art' has been challenged and its importance refreshed as key to moving culture forward - not only in order to tell the whole story, but also by asserting open access to it. This billboard exhibition, AD SPACE, is an extension of the ways we have been challenged to think about who art is for and where it belongs. Andrew Moon Bain's work fits perfectly in the summer of 2022 as it demands accountability to our behavior by celebrating the natural world and exposing the human quandary.

  • All billboard locations may be found here.

    Below are the individual sites:

    • Route 146, heading into Providence (Charles)

    • Charles Street & Paul Street (Charles)

    • Orms Street & State Street (Capitol Hill)

    • Valley Street & Jewett Street (Smith Hill)

    • Chalkstone Avenue & Sisson Street (Mt Pleasant)

    • Route 6, heading towards Downtown (Olneyville)

    • Plainfield Street & Murray Street (Silver Lake)

    • Huntington Avenue & Chambers Street (West End)

    • Adelaide Avenue & Reservoir Avenue (Elmwood)

    • Broad Street & Early Street (Elmwood)

    • Eddy Street & Aldrich Street (Lower South Providence)

    • Allen's Ave at OV's Restaurant (Lower South Providence)