On the heels of a historic election comes an exhibition at Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center: “Sapphire and Crystals: BEyONd Race and Gender,” in celebration of Black History Month.
The white walls of the gallery were covered with bright, colorful pieces as the gallery filled with people for Sunday’s opening reception.
The curator of the event, Joyce Owens, said although the exhibit follows in the wake of the election of the nation’s first black president, the show also deals with issues outside the realm of the election. Organizers began developing the event in 2008.
“I’m African American and I am a woman,” said Owens, who also has work featured in the exhibit. “So obviously those issues are important to me.”
Shyvette Williams, one of the artists, echoed this sentiment, describing the exhibit as an attempt to tear away the ideas of boundaries based on skin or culture.
“Ideas, thoughts, feelings – that’s what makes us more alike than separate, and that’s beyond race, gender, culture,” Williams said. “The name of the exhibit is BEyONd Race and Gender, and what it shows to me is spirit. Twenty-two women have come together with different disciplines but all expressing this freedom of spirit.”
One of the featured artists is Rose Blouin, a photographer Owens called a “minority in terms of art exhibitions,” because she is one of only two photographers featured in the gallery.
“She’s just an extraordinary photographer,” said Williams, who also commented on the clarity of Blouin’s artwork.
Blouin, who teaches at Columbia College Chicago, is a self-taught photographer who has been working in the business since the 1980s.
“I started with black and white, and around 2001 I started working with color and digitally,” she said.
Blouin said the idea behind her work in “BEyONd Race and Gender” is to challenge stereotypes of gender and race. Nearly all of her portraits in this exhibit are of men.
“(The portraits) represent a mix of race and culture and ask us to question our assumptions about racial and gender identity,” the photographer said. “It’s interesting that ‘Guitar Man,’ ‘Silver Man’ and ‘Indian’ all represent cultural elements and also include elements we generally associate more with the feminine: flowers, feathers, jewelry and make-up.”
“Who are these men and how do they challenge or affirm our definitions of masculinity?” she said. “How do they represent some balance of masculine and feminine within one’s being?”
“BEyONd Race and Gender,” co-sponsored by the Fleetwood-Jourdain Art Guild, runs through March 12.
