March 15 - April 12, 2025
From the Oak Cliff Cultural Center:
“The Oak Cliff Cultural Center a division of the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture is proud to present artist Aliyah Cydonia’s solo exhibition donia, a contemplation on bloodlines, memory, and corporeal awareness, opening on Saturday, March 15, 2025 with a reception from 6 – 8 pm.
donia is an homage to lineage, a vein connecting the past. Paintings and a video depicting her ancestor Sedonia resurrect familial bonds and supplant her awareness of “lives lived before”. In another painting titled “The Pilgrimage” Aliyah depicts a Cake Walk, a dance that was originated by American Slaves; performing a mockery of the Waltz and other traditional European dances. Rendered in oil, the figures in the painting are faint providing a glimpse of ancestral memory hinting at the permeable connections in bloodlines.
Through research and reflection, her paintings and video installation in the exhibition experiment with the corporeal, attempting to access the information from the bloodline that is stored within her. She likens it to a journey, explaining “this series is an exploration of the pilgrimage going on in our bodies in relation to the experiences and the entropic memories from ancestors that are being stored in us”.
Aliyah Cydonia was born in 2002 in Dallas, TX. She is a recent graduate of The University of North Texas, achieved her BFA in Studio Arts with a concentration in Painting and Drawing. Cydonia has exhibited works at Daisha Board Gallery, Tureen, SP/N Gallery at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas Contemporary, the gallery at Richland DCCCD Campus, and Paul Voertman’s Gallery. She lives and works in Dallas, TX. In 2022, Cydonia was awarded The Clare Hart DeGolyer Memorial Funded by the Dallas Museum of Art. Cydonia, along with Hannah Baskin started a collective in 2021 called Anti Avant Garde Avant Garde. The collective has performed a performance piece, Cooperative Conundrum, at the Dallas Contemporary. In 2022, Cydonia traveled to Florence, Italy to attend a paint and drawing study abroad program. In 2023, Cydonia attended the New York Academy Arts undergraduate residency. In 2024, Cydonia was an artist in residency at Arts Mission Oak Cliff.
The Oak Cliff Cultural Center is located at 223 W. Jefferson Blvd. next to the historic Texas Theater in Oak Cliff – Dallas, TX. Operating hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 12 pm – 6 pm.”
Reception: March 15, 2025 | 11 pm – 1 am
OC3- Oak Cliff Cultural Center
223 W. Jefferson Blvd.
Dallas, 75208 Texas
214-670-3777
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