Colored Criticism

A fresh take on art.

Tiffany Bradley

Pride In Many Colors

Summer is finally in the streets. With the solstice behind us and restrictions lifting, I’m so glad that we can gather again. It seemed like we might not make it to another season of celebration, but we’re here for Juneteenth and Pride. From city streets to county fairs, our communities are coming alive, with parties open to all.

One of the brightest, biggest celebrations in New York has to be Pride, along with the Puerto Rican Day Parade and West Indian Day Parade. In our city, we’re still combining digital and in-person parties as we recalibrate post-pandemic. Whatever your speed, there’s a way to honor our LGBTQ+ friends and family whether you’re on a float, hosting a cozy kickback, or digging into some critical theory (and yes, podcasts count!)

Here are my picks for Pride online. Full disclosure, all of these artists and curators are Colored Criticism friends:

  • Close reads: Lambda-award winning poet and performance artist Rosamond King does not mince words. Her latest collection “All the Rage” channels the righteous anger and unflinching hopes of living in America right now. Her incandescent, pointed and playful voice is always in style. Enjoy the book launch at Rutgers here.
  • The kids are more than all right: APA Out Loud brings us young spoken word artists Jireh Deng, Lauren Bullock, and Caitlyn Clark in virtual performance. I’m looking forward to more from their strong spirits and thoughtful reflections. Watch their work here, directed by Alberto Morales of Human Rights Campaign.
  • Teach it like you preach it: Professor and scholar Bimbola Akinbola redefines diaspora through her Queering Belonging mini-series. Her advocacy reminds us that “belonging is continuous work” and not a rigid legacy. Explore the dimensions of Nigerian diaspora artists via Northwestern University online.
  • It’s lit: Kevin Seaman illuminates the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco this weekend. Their public art commission draws from the iconography of the Transgender, Lesbian Labrys, and Leather flags this month. If you can’t visit in person (like me), check out this supercut set to Planningtorock’s Transome.

Image Credit: Meg Emiko brings their candy-colored affirmations to the APA Out Loud campaign. Meg shares “I had spent so many years trying to push the two most important parts of my identity aside, that I knew I wanted to create a platform and safe space for other AAPI and LGBTQIA+ folks so they could feel represented in some way.”

Run It Back

“If American progress is recursive, then studying the past is a form of moral vigilance, an effort to better navigate the nation’s continual cycles of violence and oppression, and perhaps help guide the country to calmer waters when the next crest hits.”

Victor Luckerson

Victor Luckerson’s Run It Back is essential reading on Tulsa, race riots, and historical memory. Subscribe now!

Audience Outlook Monitor

As part of the founding communications team for the Audience Outlook Monitor initiative, we evaluate and share how audiences feel about going out again and what will make them feel safe in order to stage a successful comeback. WolfBrown’s Audience Outlook Monitor is an international collaboration between top researchers, funders, service organizations, and hundreds of cultural organizations that want to make informed decisions about how and when to re-start programming based on rigorous research data. 

Watch the Deep Dive: “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Audience Attitudes about Covid-19”

April 5, 2021

This 60-minute session foregrounds research findings through the lens of race/ethnicity. Because of the very large sample sizes, were are able to examine differences between racial/ethnic groups within the pool of respondents (i.e., arts and culture members and ticket buyers). Following an initial presentation of research highlights, Tiffany Bradley moderates a discussion with Chandra Stephens-Albright, Managing Director of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company, a participant in the first phase of the research.

Gina Gibney

Gina Gibney is a choreographer, director, and the Founder, Artistic Director and CEO of Gibney. Gibney emerged in 1991 as an arts organization dedicated to social action, and today the organization has rapidly emerged as a cultural leader operating 23 studios across two Lower Manhattan facilities. With the mission of tapping into the vast potential of moment, creativity, and performance to effect social change and personal transformation, Gibney works through three interrelated fields of activity—Company, the acclaimed resident dance ensemble; Community, a highly respected and impactful social action program, and Center, two beautiful spaces at 890 and 280 Broadway.

Gina Gibney’s repertory of works and community outreach programs have received wide acclaim and support. Beyond the stage, Gibney is dedicated to using the transformative power of dance to give a voice to individuals in need. Considered a pioneer in connecting the arts with the broader community, her organization’s work has impacted the lives of thousands of domestic violence survivors. In 2008 she was inducted into the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame for “making art and taking action.” 

Gibney is serving her second terms as a Trustee of Dance/USA and has received the organization’s Ernie Award, given annually to a changemaker in the field. She is a Founding Member of the Board of Directors of Dance/NYC, serving the organization since 2012. She is a member of The Women’s Forum of New York is an invitation-only organization of more than 500 women representing all professional sectors and spheres of influence in our city.

Gibney was included in Dance Magazine’s 2017 list of The Most Influential People in Dance Today and was named to the Out100 2016 list of influential members of the LGBT community.

In 2018, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater Case Western Reserve University. In 2019 she received the Floria Lasky Award from the Jerome Robbins Foundation and the Plus Factor Award from the string quartet ETHEL.

Gibney is a frequent panelist and speaker on topics of dance, entrepreneurship, and arts-community partnerships. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. 

Revisioning Research: Looking at Identity and Visual Culture

Part of the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Social Justice Lecture Series 2020-2021 season, Stories and Silences: Research on Race in the Middle East.

February 18th, 2021

Critic Tiffany Bradley will examine art, literature, and photography as tools to explore Middle Eastern communities. She will discuss cultivating a multicultural, multiracial approach to research in the Middle East and North Africa. Her discussion will be informed by critical race theory and her anthropological fieldwork in Nubian communities in Cairo and Palestinians of African descent in Jerusalem. She will also talk about online networks looking at shared histories from a fresh perspective. This interactive session will consider approaches to diversifying studies for academics, researchers, and students.

Recording available upon request.

Imagination and Insurrection

Nobody wanted this. I was hoping for a bright start to this year. I was all ready to write an essay of optimism and cheer. On this Inauguration Eve, there should be promise coming – a new slate of vaccines, a change in leadership, an economic restart for the country. Instead, we’re watching a quickly unfolding story of security failures, political violence, and social polarization. 2021 could have been a fresh start, but it’s already a cautionary tale of how we’ve failed as a civil society.

Our country isn’t inviolable. It never has been. The failed Capitol coup isn’t a break in our reality, it’s a continuation of our history. But a revisionist approach to art history makes the sight of white violence unbelievable even in real time. Somehow the imagery of a white mob, attempting to destroy a government through brute force, still seems unimaginable to many Americans. That amazes me. White bodies dominate our national culture, whether in art, journalism, politics, finance, or other spheres. Our arts institutions cling to the cultural patrimony of European art, even while people of color have called to #DecolonizetheCanon for decades.

So if that’s our legacy, let’s get real about it. Our reflections of whiteness in art seem limited to heroic sculpture or gauzy pastoral landscapes. When our arts institutions curate or call in loans from European collections, it’s rarely about the failure of white nationalism or racism. The violent extremists that besieged our entire legislature took inspiration from the fascist movements of the last century – their appalling insignia, merch, and slogans make that clear. When arts institutions fail to wrestle with that legacy, it creates a predictable failure of imagination. The real trauma of the past is disappeared from our visual memory. We can’t reproduce or imagine how white nationalism creates a society shredding itself, patriotism lashing back against the people it pretends to protect. That’s our cultural heritage as well. For people of color, our survival depends on recognizing and deflecting white violence. But we aren’t the only Americans affected.

By forgetting the white artists who showed the cost of political violence, we do ourselves a disservice. German artist Käthe Kollwitz lost a son during the First World War, was harassed by the Nazi regime throughout the Third Reich, and died shortly before the end of the Second World War. Through it all, she testified to the pain of her times. She created work that showed European nationalism setting the world aflame, destroying families and drawing countries and continents into armed conflict. She shows white people suffering the effects of white nationalism. And we rarely see work like hers today. Poking around the internet, I found an article on Artnet about current opinions of her work. The TL:DR version is “she’s too emotional, too hard, and too intense.” True story – so is life.

The most surprising thing about the insurrection for me isn’t that is happened, it’s how quickly Americans are willing to turn away and move on. If there’s anything we can learn from Europe, through art history or otherwise, it’s that the fires of white nationalism don’t die out on their own. I’ll let Käthe close out the beginning of this month, and hope for better soon.

“They all devoted their lives to the idea of patriotism.

The young men in England, Russia and France did the same.

The result was […] an impoverished Europe robbed it of its most beautiful people. Was the youth in all these countries deceived?”

Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 11 October 1917

Image Credit: The Volunteers, sheet 2 of the series “War.” Woodcut, 1921/1922, courtesy of Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln. The museum calls this a “Danses Macabres” lead by a figure Death. Dancing to one’s death – a fitting image for a post-riot and mid-pandemic time. Let’s do better.

Spelling error updated August 3, 2021.