Dark Sousveillance
Friday, November 19, 2021 – Sunday, January 16, 2022
**Please Note: We will be closed for the holidays from Monday, December 20 – Thursday, January 6. We will re-open with regular gallery hours beginning Friday, January 7.
Curated by: Logan Cryer
Featuring: Kenyssa Evans, Danny Giles, Ishtar Sr., Cameron Jarvis, NIC Kay, and Danielle Morris
Presented in Commons Space & Black Box
About the Exhibition
Dark Sousveillance contemplates how Black people are responding to the tension between wanting to be seen by each other and wanting to hide from the violence of hypervisibility. This desire to be known without being objectified is especially pronounced when entering most art spaces, which are usually dominated by the white gaze. In response, this gallery is staged like a party, where dynamics of visibility, power, and subversion are in flux.
Researcher Simone Browne coined the term “dark sousveillance” to describe the phenomenon of enslaved Black people disappearing themselves from racialized surveillance by creatively subverting their own hypervisibility; think Negro Spirituals or quilts sewn with coded maps to the North. They knew what white people thought they saw and used this knowledge for their own advantage.
This talent for creative escape has not left us. Contextualizing the history or surveillance and how people have resisted it is a crucial tool against modern forces of gentrification and militarization.
At times we know they are watching us and we find power in the attention. Sometimes they miss us completely.
In this exhibition, artists Kenyssa Evans, Danielle Morris, Cameron Jarvis, Ishtar Sr., NIC Kay, and Danny Giles present works that tell stories about the cities they have called home: Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Rotterdam, and Washington, D.C. These artists are critical of mass media and have produced candid works that celebrate the complexities of our day-to-day lives. Sometimes autobiographical, sometimes documentative, the artworks in Dark Sousveillance are generously genuine.
Artist List
Kenyssa Evans (@kensayhi) / Danny Giles (@dgilesstudio) / Cameron Jarvis (@cameronjarvisart) / NIC Kay (@okaynickay) / Danielle Morris (@__danniphantom) / Ishtar Sr. (@ishtar.sr + @savandepaul)
About the Curator
Logan Cryer is a curator based in Philadelphia with a penchant for local art histories. They are an alum of Moore College of Art & Design, where they acquired a BFA in Fine Arts and minored in Curatorial Studies. Logan attended Headlong Performance Institute in the Fall of 2017 and has orbited experimental performance and dance spaces ever since. Since 2020, Logan has been a part of Television, a service that provides low cost technology rentals to curators, activists, and organizers in Philadelphia. In 2021, Logan launched SNAIL Gallery, an online curatorial experiment. SNAIL consists of exhibitions that are posted temporarily to Instagram and are subsequently archived through an essay, an artist talk, and the sharing of artist quotes. Logan is a contributor to Artblog and one of the hosts for Artblog Radio. They like to rewatch documentaries.
More Info: logancryer.com / @mercuny