Afro Mingei: Artist Incubator at The Bray

AFRO MINGEI

ARTIST INCUBATOR AT THE BRAY

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Theaster Gates Soojin Choi

Phoebe Collings-James

Sydnie Jimenez

Steven Young Lee

Kristy Moreno

Sajdah Nasir

Kambui Olujimi

THEASTER GATES (b. 1973) is an artist and social innovator who lives and works in Chicago. Over the past decade, Gates has translated the intricacies of Blackness through space theory and land development, sculpture, and performance. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, he extends the role of the artist as an agent of change. His performance practice and visual work find roots in Black knowledge, objects, history, and archives.

Gates has exhibited and performed at The New Museum, New York, (2022); The Aichi Triennial, Tokoname (2022); The Serpentine Pavilion, London (2022); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2021); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013 and 2021); Tate Liverpool, UK (2020); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Palais de Tokyo Paris, France (2019); Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art,

Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012).

In 2010, Gates created the Rebuild Foundation, a nonprofit platform for art, cultural development, and neighborhood transformation that supports artists and strengthens communities through free arts programming and innovative cultural amenities in the Grand Crossing neighborhood of the South Side of Chicago.

Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

In April 2018, Gates was appointed as the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Artist and Director of Artist Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art, Colby College, Waterville Maine. He was the Visiting Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome (2020); and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021. Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and serves as the Special Advisor to the President for Arts Initiatives.

SOOJIN CHOI was born and raised in Chang Won, South Korea and has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Soojin earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 with a double major in craft/ material studies and painting/ printmaking. She continued her studies at Alfred University to pursue a MFA degree in ceramics in 2018. After graduate school, she accepted a residency at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN with funding by Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship and a long-term resident artist at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT.

The ambivalence of human emotion occurs through unresolved and confusing situations in external and internal matters. An ambivalent moment reveals itself to Soojin Choi, and her work depicts that gray area of humanity. Soojin recreates unsettled situations so viewers can empathetically encounter the emotions of her human forms. Soojin’s work expresses ambiguity of emotion through flat and spatial surfaces; subtle facial expression, gaze and body gesture; as well as color and brush expressions. Building the surfaces with clay allows seamless weaving between dimensions and textures to articulate feelings of ambivalence.

Soojin is a current long term resident at The Bray and the 2022 Joan Lincoln Fellow.

British artist PHOEBE COLLINGS-JAMES is a multidisciplinary artist, working in sculpture, painting and video. CollingsJames chooses to use her whole body in the creation of her paintings, whether by using it to spread oil paint on an unstretched canvas, crushing eggs with her feet or stepping on ivory black pigment and tracing her footprints on it.

She has been the recipient residencies including: Still House Group, New York: March - June 2012 and Nuove Ceramic Residency, Nove, Italy: July - September 2014. She has also been invited to speak at different institutions, including: Fighting the Establishment or creating a New one? at The Cass School of Art and Architecture, 2014; Authenticity and Identity at Tate Britain, 2014; Being Mixed Race at the WOW festival, Royal Festival Hall, 2014; and Women in The Arts - Are Things Equal? at Shoreditch House, 2012. Her work continues to be shown internationally, most recently in Arles, Paris, and Düsseldorf.

Her work deeply explores the notions of violence, sexuality, desire, and beauty and she further explores feminism and contemporary art through her web project/ platform Cunt Today .

SYDNIE JIMENEZ makes figurative work of brown youth with varied personalities to show individuality within communities on the fringes of a popular culture rooted in white supremacy. The navigation through this toxic Eurocentric foundation has shaped the way the world views brown people and how they view themselves in relation to whiteness. Figures portray conversations around style, self-expression, internal reflection, and the observation of the self by others in relation to the post-colonial society we live in along with the many connotations this has. With the rebellious and suspicious nature of her figurative work she shows the tough demeanors in which especially black and brown femmes take on or are projected onto as a defense mechanism combatting an unwelcoming society.

Sydnie Jimenez was born in Orlando, FL and spent most of her childhood in north Georgia from which she draws much inspiration. She recently graduated from SAIC with a BFA focusing in ceramic sculpture and is a recipient of the Windgate Fellowship and the SPARK Grant. Much of her work centers around the representation of black/ brown youth and self-expression as a form of protest, self-care, and power within community.

Sydnie is a current long term resident at The Bray and the 2022 Quigley-Hiltner Fellow.

STEVEN YOUNG LEE was the resident artist director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana from 2006-2022. In 2004-05, he lectured and taught at numerous universities throughout China as part of a one-year cultural and educational exchange in Jingdezhen, Shanghai and Beijing. In 2005-6 he was a visiting professor at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C.

Steve has lectured extensively in North America and Asia. In March 2013 he participated on a panel, “Americans in the Porcelain City,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2013, he was one of several international artists invited to participate in “New Blue and White,” an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that featured contemporary artists working in the blue-and-white tradition of ceramic production. In the Fall of 2016 his work will be featured as part of the Renwick Invitational at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

He is represented by the Duane Reed Gallery, Ferrin Contemporary and The Archie Bray Foundation Gallery. His work has been collected by the Smithsonian Museum, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, Korea, as well as many private collections.

Steve received his BFA and MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in Helena with his wife, Lisa and their son and daughter Gavin and Florence.

KRISTY MORENO’S current body of work examines the systems and bonds between social, political, and personal narratives. These narratives intersect to embody forms of relativity, healing and resilience. By producing these physically paused moments, she introduces a space for reflection which investigates the journey of a personal point of view, individual habits and character.

Kristy Moreno was born in the city of Inglewood, California and often found herself creating doodles of her favorite cartoons. Moving to Orange County inspired her to become involved in the art communities of Santa Ana leading her to collaborate with group collectives including We Are Rodents and Konsept. She then attended Santa Ana College where she found an interest in ceramics that lead her to transfer to California State University, Chico to pursue a BFA degree. Her work now spans across mediums from ceramics, illustrations and printmaking to bring awareness and visibility to an abundant future where mutual aid is possible.

Kristy is a current long term resident at The Bray and the 2022 Etchart-Satre Fellow.

SAJDAH NASIR is a Los Angeles based artist who centers her work around transformation and process. She uses clay to examine the role of the body, mind, and spirit within artistic craft. Her work is deeply interested in the relationship between the practices involved in her artistic process and the effects on the works produced. The practices of trying to balance the willful control of the making hand and the deferential inspiration of the creating mind. The moments of ceramic process where a maker has to perform exacting command over the materials, and the moments where a maker must relinquish and be guided by the larger governing laws of nature. Water, air, fire, and minerals as they combine and react teach lessons of surrender and control. To both lead and be led at the same time. Of open breath, a clear mind, and a present body. Through making, she examines the notion of stillness. Upon sitting in the studio to create, there exists a meditative practice of assessing what in the moment needs to be taken away or added in order for the transformative power of the clay to actualize. The maker is both an authority and a disciple of the laws of nature and of the truths of the ever illusive, painfully consequential, and rewarding aspects of an artistic life. Clay is the ground to walk on, the surface to behold, and a metaphor to live by.

KAMBUI OLUJIMI was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn and received his MFA from Columbia University in New York City. Olujimi’s work complicates and reconsiders established modes of thinking that have morphed into what commonly function as “inevitabilities.” This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary bodies of work that investigate these phenomena from multiple angles of inquiry. His work manifests collective psychic space as a means of investigating social practices, policies, and exchanges. He excavates the language and aesthetics of social, historical, and cultural conventions and brings them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and their illusory nature. This pursuit takes shape through bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video and performance. His solo exhibitions include; Zulu Time, at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, A Life in Pictures, at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Solastalgia, at Cue Arts Foundation, and Wayward North at Art in General.

His works have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Mass MoCA. His work has been featured internationally at Museo Nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid; Kunsthal Rotterdam in Netherlands; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland and Para Site in Hong Kong, and soon to be shown at Sharjah Biennial 15, among others. Olujimi has been awarded residencies from Black Rock Senegal, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and MacDowell.

He has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions including The Jerome Foundation, NFYA/ NYSCA Fellowship, MTA Arts & Design and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Media coverage of Olujimi’s work includes; The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, CNN, and The New York Times. Monographs on his past project include Walk With Me, (2020), Zulu Time (2017), Wayward North (2012), The Lost Rivers Dream Index (2007/ 2018), Walk the Plank (2006), and Winter in America (in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas, 2006).

“The opportunity to be in the open landscape and work with soda firing was my most unique moment, as well as getting to work in an environment with people uniquely working with clay. Coming from a fine arts background I had not previously experienced this.” —

Phoebe Collings-James

Phoebe Collings-James

At the onset, I don’t believe I was alone in feeling overwhelmed with the amount of formlessness. The Arts Incubation program was presented simply as time to explore, convene, and make. Uniquely, there was no output required of us, no large project to complete, no demands on how we structured our time. The summer was an experiment of equity and inclusion within ceramics, designed to create space for artists of color within the field of ceramics. Most of the work to be done was simply in gathering the group of creators together and watching as we intuitively found ripening and refinement at the Bray and fellowship with one other.

Paramount in this program was an effort to expand access to a field that through industrialization and professionalization has become quite white centered. Churned through capitalist modernity, the ubiquitous practice of taking deep earth and crafting it into form and function overtime morphed into an activity for the privileged and leisurely. The Arts Incubation program provided unbounded resources and a lack of boundary that encouraged us to feel our way through the studio, and feel our way through each other. An organic community was formed, in which we could collaborate, test new techniques, share knowledge, and hold discussions. We all had individual schedules, yet the collective nature of the studio space supported constant

Soojin Choi

conversation and connection. We were all venturing our way through the vastness of the opportunity, and what at first felt like a stark amount of formlessness settled into a balance, it was an amazing atmosphere to create from.

Often there is an assumption that in order to counteract inequitable structures of power, we need structures of equal and opposite nature to counterbalance them. But oftentimes, it’s the structure itself that is oppressive and stands in the way of change. This summer at the Bray held in it the wisdom of shapeless convening and the marked observation of the beautiful, creative, and expansive things that can happen when artists have the space to simply be.

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ESSAY BY SAJDAH NASIR

Kambui Olujimi

Sydnie Jimenez, Haylie Jimenez, Kristy Moreno

Haylie Jimenez, Sydnie Jimenez

“I enjoyed how the experience provided opportunities of learning in togetherness and exploration in solitude.” --Sajdah Nadir

Phoebe Collings-James, Sajdah Nasir

Kambui Olujimi

“It was an incredible opportunity to meet seasoned ceramicists as well as to experiment with techniques I’ve never tried before. Also while at The Bray, I was fortunate enough to meet fellow artists that are now friends. I look forward to growing conversations with this new community. The program allowed me the space to create works that were shown in my presentation at Sharjah Biennial 15 titled ‘In The Dark, We Lose Our Edges.’

-Kambui Olujimi

Kambui Olujimi

Steven Young Lee, Sydnie Jimenez, Kristy Moreno, Soojin Choi

Phoebe Collings-James

Fire Bricks for Beverly, 2022

dimensions vary

soda fired ceramic

Phoebe Collings-James

Fire Bricks for Beverly, 2022

dimensions vary

soda fired ceramic

Soojin Choi

You Were Here, 2023

25” x 34” x 21” ceramic

Empty Vase, 2022

15” x 13” x 13”

ceramic

Soojin Choi & Steven Young Lee

Curly Head, 2022

26” x 28” x 23”

stoneware, glaze, oxide wash, rhinestones

Sydnie Jimenez

Sydnie Jimenez & Steven Young Lee Guardian Angels, 2022

15” x 15” x 15” porcelain, glaze, oxide wash

Guardian Angels, 2022

15” x 15” x 15”

porcelain, glaze, oxide wash

Sydnie Jimenez & Steven Young Lee

Homegirls Moon Jar, 2022

16” x 14” x 14”

ceramic

Kristy Moreno & Steven Young Lee

Kristy Moreno

Zig Zag Turtleneck, 2022

9” x 7” x 7.5”

ceramic

Theaster Gates

Thank you to The Bray Staff who made this programming possible

Rebecca Harvey, Executive Director

Steven Young Lee, Director Emeritus and Special Projects Manager

Stephanie Seguin, Education Manager

Allison Rowland, Administrative Coordinator

Perry Haas, Facilities and Studio Manager

Chuck Aydlett, Clay Business Manager

Jon Bashioum, Clay Business Production Manager

Todd Pentico, Clay Business Retail Manager

Cole Collier, Clay Business Online Store Manager & Brickyard Network Associate Producer

Alison Dawson, Development Director

Teresa Amsbaugh, Development Officer

Heartfelt Gratitude to all the 2022 Bray Residents for their welcoming and supportive involvement.

The Archie Bray Foundation recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the Foundation now stands.

Indigenous people have inhabited the valley in which Helena is situated for more than 12,000 years; the valley acting as a crossover for Salish, Crow, Bannock, and Blackfeet tribes among others.

The Bray respectfully acknowledges all Indigenous communities whose land we reside on in what is now known as Montana — past, present, future — and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence. We believe that acknowledging and reflecting upon the contemporary lived experience and history of the Indigenous peoples here in Montana and around the world are essential steps toward creating a more equitable world.