What would it mean to co-create and be in a homemade space of interior worldmaking imagined for and with Black girls, women, and femmes as part of their everyday creative livelihoods?
Homemade, with Love: More Living Room is a multimedia installation that brings together interior design, audio and visual art made with Black girls. The exhibition seeks to merge local, national and global critical arts engagement with Black girls to curate a homemade space that centers Black girls’ creativity, design, and lived experience.
Ricker Library of Architecture and Art has developed a library guide that includes details about work contained in this gallery, as well as supplementary materials and curator-recommended reading: Library Guide for Homemade, with Love: More Living Room
An illustrated checklist and exhibition notes by Blair Ebony Smith is available for download: Homemade, with Love Checklist
What would it mean to co-create homemade space for and with Black girls to activate their everyday creative dreams and livelihoods? Homemade, with Love: More Living Room is an exhibition featuring artists that visualize and sound everyday life, celebration, and creativity with Black girls and Black girlhood in mind and heart. This evolving installation makes room for celebration, creativity and imagination of Black girls, women, and femmes. Homemade, located in the contemporary gallery, also serves as an active studio art space for critical arts-based making sessions with Black girls and those who love them.
In the fall, we installed past artwork made during Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truth’s (SOLHOT) sessions with Black girls locally at Urbana and Franklin Middle Schools; a portion of Unheard Sounds, Come Through, an installation by St. Louis-based artist Jen Everett; works by Black women artists in Krannert Art Museum’s collection, including Carrie Mae Weems, Margo Humphrey, and Doris Derby; as well as two time-based films by student and filmmaker, Kamari Smalls. In addition, the installation includes personal Gees Build family quilt from the curator, a collection of children 's books and theme-related texts and a listening station with records from her at-home collection.
This spring, we are set to add and install film work by Tiffany Harris, Kamari Smalls, and New Orleans based artist, cyan cian. New film work will particularly explore Black girlhood and our varying relationships to ecosystems, nature, movement and bodily experience. Visual art by Seth E. Davis (mixed-media collage), Nimot Ogunfemi (mixed media collage), and Huey Metropolis (digital illustration) will accompany time-based media to explore themes of Black experience, life and creativity, with particular focus on diverse femme and girl identities.
(Updated: February 15, 2021)
Curated by Blair Ebony Smith, DRIVE Postdoctoral Fellow in Art Education
