Top Five: May 30, 2024

by Glasstire May 30, 2024

Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.

For last week’s picks, please go here.

A mixed media work by Lubaina Himid featuring three figures at a table.

Lubaina Himid, “Pointless Heroism,” 2023, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. Photo: by Andy Keate.

1. LUBAINA HIMID: MAKE DO AND MEND
The Contemporary Austin
March 1 – July 21, 2024

From the Contemporary Austin:

“Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar; lives and works in Preston, UK) is the recipient of the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, which is envisioned as a transformative award for the artist and the community in Austin. Over a four decades-long career, Himid has explored and expanded the possibilities of painting and storytelling to depict contemporary everyday life and to fill in gaps within art history through the depiction and centering of Black figures and experience.

Self-described as a painter, cultural activist, witness, storyteller, and historian, Himid has been an especially influential figure within the British Black arts movement in the 1980s and a champion of women artists through her role as a teacher, curator, critic, and organizer. Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend debuts two new bodies of work created specifically in response to the context of the Jones Center at The Contemporary Austin.”

A silkscreen print by Ester Hernández featuring a Latina figure with a tattoo of Our Lady of Guadalupe on her back.

Ester Hernández, “La Ofrenda,” 1988, silkscreen print. Gift of Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, 91.62.8

2. Lovers & Fighters: Prints by Latino Artists in the SAMA Collection
San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA)
April 20, 2024 – April 18, 2025

From SAMA:

Lovers & Fighters: Prints by Latino Artists in the SAMA Collection highlights works featuring imagery and subjects related to concepts of love, power, and struggle. Romantic couples, heart motifs, boxers, and wrestlers evoke ‘lovers’ and ‘fighters’ and serve as points of departure to explore these seemingly opposing concepts. However, the prints on view reframe and expand upon those subjects, offering nuanced interpretations of emotions that go beyond stereotypes of romance and violence.

The focus on printmaking also demonstrates the medium’s influence in Latino art history—from politically engaged works produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular printmaking collective in 1940s Mexico City to Chicano activism in the United States during the ’60s and ’70s and today’s community-based studios, including Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles and Coronado Studio in Austin. The medium’s capacity to produce multiple prints enables accessibility to a broad audience while its ability to capture bold, graphic imagery provides a resounding platform for the artist’s voice.”

A photograph by Cara Barer of an opened and abstracted book.

Cara Barer, “Burgundy,” 2015, archival pigment print, 36 x 36 inches.

3. Cara Barer: Bibliomania
Catherine Couturier Gallery (Houston)
May 18 – June 22, 2024

From Catherine Couturier Gallery:

“Catherine Couturier Gallery is thrilled to announce its upcoming exhibition  showcasing Cara Barer’s captivating transformation of books into stunning works of art. Barer’s unique artistic process involves sculpting and dyeing books, then photographing them in beautiful abstract compositions. Through her artistry, Barer not only breathes new life into old books but also initiates a dialogue about the evolving nature of physical books in today’s digital age.”

A photograph of an installation featuring a metal sculpture and colorful wires hanging in the air and plugged into devices sitting on the ground.

Installation view of “Miguel Sbastida: Future Reefs”

4. Miguel Sbastida: Future Reefs
The Power Station (Dallas)
April 3 – July 1, 2024

A statement from the artist, via Picnic Curatorial Projects at The Power Station:

“If I could talk to a coral reef, I would ask them to tell me how it is to live on the sea bed, in a parallel world but on this same Earth. I wonder about the adaptative superpowers of all the creatures that live there, and their voices too. I wonder if they know we are here roaming the dry soil and changing the Earth system at large. I wonder, if they can hear the sounds of our oil rigs and our motorboats and if they enjoy the chatter of airplanes passing by the sky. I wonder if they know about deep sea mining and if, as trees in a forest, they also feel the death of neighbor reefs to blast fishing and trawling. I wonder if they can hear the silence emanating from their bleached bodies and I can’t fail to wonder if they might speak to us as well. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be cooked alive, in an ocean of warming, acidifying waters; but if I could, I would ask them to tell us their story, through the embodied knowledge that they are, as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth.”

A photograph of small colored translucent items adhered to a window.

A work from “Catherine Czacki: universe will take it”

5. Catherine Czacki: universe will take it
Co-Opt Research and Projects (Lubbock)
May 25 – August 18, 2024

From Co-Opt Research and Projects:

“Catherine Czacki is an artist, writer, musician, and educator of Polish/Tatar and American descent living in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Czacki’s practice incorporates ceramics, metal, paper mache, found objects, fabric, wood, eco resin, painting, drawing, critical theory, poetry, and sound. Czacki’s art has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Czacki’s scholarly work intersected de/anti/post colonial studies with thinking through terminologies imposed on artists that can limit the understanding of artistic and social roles in communities, such as the term outsider. Additional fields of study are gardening, DIY repairing and building, herbalism, human, animal, plant, material relationships, organic communities, everyday histories or folklores and the diasporic and wide traveling evil eye which intersects with Czacki’s own familial past.”

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