Wading: When the Water Rises
Featuring: angel shanel edwards, Ashanté Kindle, Khari Turner, and Arien Wilkerson
Curated by: Chelsey Luster
Friday, February 11, 2022 – Sunday, March 13, 2022
Presented in Commons Space – A
PLAN YOUR VISIT
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About the Exhibition
Wading: When the Water Rises showcases the works of four Black artists and their contemporary and historic relationship to water through the examination of history, spirituality, accessibility, the environment, and culture. Working in installation, performance, film, painting, and photography, the artists in Wading explore the timeless relationship between Black people and water.
angel shanel edwards is a tender flame, a blackqueerandtrans first-gen Jamaican / Philly rooted healer. Through movement channeling, laying hands on scalps, witnessing through photography, tender poetics, and filmmaking, they compass towards liberation and abundance. angel is committed to healing their wounds by listening to smoke, water, the earth, their ancestors, themselves, and community. angel cultivates black queer and trans brilliance and community everyday. They hold this quote by genius Gwendolyn Brooks: “we are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
More Info: angeledwardsart.com / @angeledwardsart
Through painting, Ashanté Kindle creates abstracted wave forms inspired by the textures that occur in Black hair naturally and through a range of styling techniques. These waves exist as a visual language used to celebrate the history and beauty of Blackness. She currently resides in Hartford, CT as an MFA candidate at The University of Connecticut. She received her BFA from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. She has exhibited at Fridman Gallery (New York), Red Arrow Gallery (Tennessee) and Finlandia University many among others.
More Info: ashantekindle.com / @ashantekindle
Khari Turner is an artist who paints because of his understanding of his identity and history, recovering the air of a story. Turner imagines the personifications of the magic that is water. Turner uses water from oceans, lakes, and rivers from places that have either a historical or personal connection to Black people – water that he collects to mix with and pour onto his paintings. Turner’s paintings and drawings combine abstraction with realistic renderings of Black noses and lips to investigate the spiritual and physical record to his ancestor’s relationships with water.
More Info: khariturner.com / @khari.raheem
Arien Wilkerson (they/she) is a Philadelphia-based, gender-fluid, Black, and queer choreographer, performer, filmmaker and installation artist. Wilkerson is the founder of Tnmot Aztro, a collaborative and multidisciplinary performance-installation company that is rooted in repurposing or redefining meanings of “fine art” and its attachments to colonialism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racism.
More Info: tnmotaztro.com / @ariaztro
About the Curator
Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, visual artist and art educator from Baltimore, Maryland. Luster received their BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture and attended a residency at Chautauqua School of Art. As a curator, Luster has organized multiple group exhibitions, was a Katheryn Pannepacker Curatorial Fellow at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, and is currently developing their curatorial practices as a Vox Populi member. As a curator, Chelsey’s mission is to create exhibitions that transform ways of thinking, push the boundaries of the binaries, and showcase complex narratives. These exhibitions focus on current issues surrounding politics, race, mental health, social and systemic structures, and community.
More Info: chelseyluster.com / @chelseylusterart