Give Them Their Flowers: A Conversation between Chelsea A. Flowers and Makeba Rainey
Inspired by Give Me My Flowers, the recent exhibition by Chelsea A. Flowers held at Vox Populi in June/July 2021, Vox Member Makeba Rainey hosts a conversation with Chelsea about making work during the dual pandemics of Covid-19 and White supremacy. In this funny and vulnerable episode, both artists discuss curating community on social media, the importance of stand-up comedy, and navigating the traumas inflicted by White “allies” onto Black artists in art and institutional spaces.
Bonus: Watch Chelsea’s video “The Melanated Corner” on the artist’s website.
CW/TW: This episode contains explicit language and mentions sexual and physical assault.
Also Streaming on All Major Platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcast and Pocket Cast
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Chelsea A. Flowers is an artist who holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2017), and a BFA from Denison University in Studio Art with a concentration in Black Studies (2013).
She has shown work at various art centers and galleries in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Iowa City, Kansas City and Philadelphia. She currently has work on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI). She expanded her skills and research by attending ACRE (Steuben, WI), Real Time and Space (Oakland, CA), Ox-Bow School of Arts and Artist Residency (Saugatuck, MI) and Art Space is Your Space (Cincinnati, OH) residencies.
Her practice explores subversion to popular culture, how “otherness” is created through social and cultural critique of her environment. She explores these ideas through comedic troupes, physical play, nostalgic memorabilia, and participatory performance.
More Info: ChelseaAFlowers.com / @chelseaaf1
Makeba Rainey’s creative practice focuses on building community and what that looks like. For her, community is an extension of family. By centering her work around social justice, specifically in regard to Black Americans, community becomes the key to liberation. Her artwork taps into aspects of the Black community, merging the old with the new by re-envisioning the ancestors through new media and creating space for young creatives to build and sustain themselves. Although a lot of her work is local to Harlem, she creates bonds with the larger Black community through her web-based artist collective incorporating the themes of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter.
Originally from Harlem, New York, Makeba is a self-taught artist best known for her digital collage portraits of contemporary and historical Black icons. Makeba an internationally-exhibited artist, a 2017 Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project, a 2018 member of Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia, a 2018 CFEVA Fellow, a 2018 Season III NARS resident Artist, and an Absolut Art artist.
More Info: @JustKeebs
