DUST ➯ RAINBOW
FRONT International Triennial’s second edition to embrace art as therapeutic process Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986, Columbia, S.C.; lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.), “Dawn,” (2021). HD color video and 3D animation with artist-designed wallpaper on masonry wall, Cleveland Clinic, as part of FRONT International. Photo courtesy Cleveland Clinic. By Becky Raspe
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his summer, the FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art aims to be a rainbow of sorts – an exhibition of brightness and healing across Northeast Ohio following a very hard storm.
Launched in 2018, FRONT will return to welcome international artists to 20 Northeast Ohio sites on July 16, running through Oct. 2. Titled “Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows,” the second iteration of the contemporary art festival aims to approach and embrace art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing and a therapeutic process. The name is in homage to a 1957 poem, “Two Somewhat Different Epigrams” by Langston Hughes: “Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see. That without dust the rainbow would not be. I look with awe upon the human race. And God, who sometimes spits right in its face.” Prem Krishnamurthy, artistic director of the 2022 FRONT triennial, says the theme and title of this year’s triennial dates back to 2019, after copious research and several visits to
10 | Canvas | Spring 2022
regional artistic hubs like Cleveland, Akron and Oberlin, visits with institutions and partners in those communities, artists and other historical or contemporary sites that seemed important to the curatorial team. “It came out of thinking about the history of the region, and the kind of industrial production that produced prosperity and wealth, but also had negative effects on the environment and on social infrastructure,” Krishnamurthy says. “And also the very fraught and challenging relationships that do exist in Cleveland and the region between different kinds of communities.” FURTHER SHAPING OF ‘OH, GODS’ After the theme was announced in January 2020, Krishnamurthy says full-scale planning for a 2021 event began. But, little did anyone know what the next two years would bring, and how the theme would remain relevant – almost too much so – he adds. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, FRONT was postponed until 2022. “What has been important is to think about how art works in all of these different time frames,” Krishnamurthy says. “That fact that art making, exhibition making and triennial making are all longterm processes that do not emerge in a day. At the same time, there are these ways in which art can create pleasure and joy and bring people together around shared
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