Hyde Park Art Center announces a group exhibition curated by Dr. Rikki Byrd from its first Radicle Curatorial Residency. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s canonical text Beloved, the exhibition’s title Mark Me, Too reflects on how the marks of legacy and heritage are imprinted on the identities of five Black femme/nonbinary artists, told through their personal histories. Spotlighting works by Lisa DeAbreau, Ciarra K. Walters, Lex Marie, Natasha Moustache, and Lola Ayisha Ogbara, the exhibition runs from August 9 through December 14 in the Kanter Family Foundation Gallery on the second floor of the Art Center. Admission is free.

Drawing on their connections to Nigeria, Seychelles, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and the United States, these artists bring a diasporic point of view to mining the marks imprinted on their respective identities. While artists such as Lex Marie and Natasha Moustache offer distinct perspectives to tracing maternal connections and African American histories of motherhood, respectively, Ciarra K. Walters offers an exploration of what she calls "daughterhood," and how it informs her own self-making. Lola Ayisha Ogbara stretches this further in her work, drawing on adornment practices of Black girls and femmes, using acrylic nails, mannequin heads, and jump ropes, offering Black beauty as a form of critique, as well as an art form. Continuing the consideration of maternal lineage, Lisa DeAbreau draws on motifs of respectability and architecture to reflect on memory-making and archival encounters.

Taken together, the artists' responses to the tradition of mark-making are twofold: through the representation of their own hand in the work, as well as marks of migration, movement, hybridity, legacy, and identity. By extending brushstrokes, threads, and unlikely materials––from birthing blankets to egg shells––the artists repurpose materials to reflect on how they carry these marks through their practice. The final works leave seams visible, overturn popular emblems, or obscure materials only to make them palpable under the surface, bringing forth the ways the past is never the past, what Morrison called "rememory."

An opening reception will take place on Saturday, August 9, 2 - 4 p.m., free and open to all with no registration required.

Mark Me, Too and Dr. Rikki Byrd’s residency are made possible due to the generosity of the Guida Family Fund for Creativity. The Radicle Curator is rooted at the Art Center for a sixteen-month period to participate in programs with the cohort of resident artists, conduct studio visits with artists around Chicago pertaining to their curatorial interests, and be in critical dialog with the Exhibitions and Residency team to curate an engaging group exhibition that addresses pressing civic issues of the time.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dr. Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Black Fashion Archive and the co-founder of the Fashion and Race Syllabus, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Culture Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Art and Art History. Across her writing, teaching, and curatorial projects, she draws connections between Black aesthetic practices, including 20th and 21st century art, fashion studies, and performance.