MOONSHINE: THE CELESTIAL FILMS OF KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

June 15, 2023 – October 1, 2023

In partnership with Art Windsor-Essex (AWE), Media City Film Festival organized Kevin Jerome Everson’s first solo exhibition in Canada, curated by Greg de Cuir Jr. and Oona Mosna, with its inaugural installation at AWE’s flagship gallery in downtown Windsor.

MOONSHINE: The Celestial Films of Kevin Jerome Everson marked the first occasion that the internationally celebrated American artist’s complete body of astral-focussed films were presented together, offering a rare chance to experience his cinematic renderings documenting the shape, surface, and spatio-temporal movements of stellar objects, tracing their revolutionary and cosmic cycles, and capturing brief and brilliant encounters between lunar and solar bodies.

As stated by Dr. Terri Francis: ”Through Everson’s eyes, we share the perspective of a black artist following his curiosity and craft. Informed by conceptual art and realism, Everson’s work in moving images involves abstraction and reflexivity, and it is precisely, if ironically, the lack of cultural specificity or personal reference that centres blackness in a universal experience all of us can enjoy.”

MOONSHINE’s Windsor edition featured six works: Rough and Unequal: Oceanus Procellarum (2017), Polly One (2018), Polly Two (2018), Condor (2019), Black Vulture (2021) and the world premiere of the artist’s most recent lunar study, Thirty-Seven Degrees (2023). MOONSHINE is slated to tour in 2024-2025..

KEVIN JEROME EVERSON (1965) is an artist and filmmaker born in Mansfield, Ohio. He has completed more than 200 films since 1997, quietly assembling one of the most remarkable collections of contemporary African American life ever committed to cinema. He received a BFA from University of Akron (1987) and an MFA from Ohio University (1990). His work has been exhibited widely at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Venice International Film Festival. Everson has received midcareer film retrospectives at Cinéma du Réel / Centre Pompidou (2019), Harvard Film Archive (2018), Tate Modern (2017), and Media City Film Festival (2011). His work has also been featured at the 2008, 2012, and 2017 Whitney Biennials, the Sharjah Biennial (2013), and the Carnegie International (2018). He is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2012), Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities (2019), Berlin Prize (2020), and Guggenheim (1996) and American Academy in Rome Fellowships (2020). Media City Film Festival has screened 50+ films by Everson since 2009. He is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Artwork courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures. Special thanks to Madeleine Molyneaux (Picture Palace Pictures), Travis Bird (Shotgun Cinema), Sophie Cavoulacos (MoMA), Art Windsor-Essex staff, and David Cyrenne (Caesars Windsor).

26TH MEDIA CITY FILM FESTIVAL / NOVEMBER 7 - 11 2023 / WINDSOR-DETROIT THANK YOU

Miguel Armas and Mariya Nikiforova at Light Cone (Paris); Katherine Driscoll at Archive Simone Leigh (New York); Carmen Accaputo at Cineteca di Bologna; Brittni Collins at Ja’Tovia Gary Studio (Dallas); Brian Belovarac at Janus Films (New York); Dietmar Schwärzler, Gerald Weber, Daniela Zahlner, and Jonida Laçi at Sixpack Film (Vienna); John Klacsmann at Anthology Film Archives (New York); Christina Wimmer and Jonas Schenk at Galerie Gisela Capitain (Cologne); David Lebrun and Rosey Guthrie (San Francisco); Ryan Krivoshey and Kazu Watanabe at Grasshopper Film (New York); Diana Kluge at Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin); Steve Polta at San Francisco Cinematheque; Emir West at Sky Hopinka Studio; Angelika Ramlow at Arsenal (Berlin); Dylan Lustrin at neugerriemschneider (Berlin); Gene Speers, Jesse Brossoit and Winsor Ytterock at CFMDC (Toronto); Ben Balcom at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Serge Abiaad at La Distributrice de films (Montréal); Seth Mitter and Brett Kashmere at Canyon Cinema (San Francisco); Annouchka de Andrade (Paris); Yasmina Price (New York); Mark Toscano at Academy Film Archive (Hollywood); Tara Merenda Nelson at Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester); Sanne Jehoul at Square Eyes Film (Vienna); Chris Kennedy and Renata Mohamed at LIFT (Toronto); Elida Schogt and staff at Media Arts Network of Ontario; Mark Haslam and Barbara Gilbert at the Ontario Arts Council; Almudena Escobar López (Toronto); Herb Shellenberger (Bethlehem, PA); Parastoo Anoushapour (Toronto); and all of our valued partners and supporters in the Windsor-Detroit area: Leila Abdelrazaq and A’leetzia Burns at Allied Media; Debi Croucher at Indaba Marketing; Julia Galli, Tom Savage, Sheila Wisdom, and Gayle Allen at the Capitol Theatre; Jeremy Klaver at the Windsor Symphony Orchestra; Larry Baranski and staff at the Detroit Film Theatre; Fabio Costante at City of Windsor; Kylie Young and Becky at the Little Petal Flower Truck; Jordan Beaumier at Four Points Sheraton; Brian Yeomans at FHC Hotels & Resorts Inc; Tom Lucier, Joe O’Brien, and staff at Phog Lounge; Jennifer Matotek, Emily McKibbon, Stephen Nilsson, Spencer Montcalm, Tom Primeau, Beneau Plancher, Julie Rae Tucker, Nicole McCabe, Sean Chooti, Muriel Kahwagi, and Nadja Pelkey at Art Windsor-Essex; Cassandra Getty at Museum London; Teajai Travis and Stephen Mueller at Artcite Inc; Vivian I. at dream hampton studio; Alejandro Tamayo and Maria Mediratta at Arts Council Windsor and Region; Gordon Orr, Lynnette Bain, and Lionel Kernerman at Tourism Windsor-Essex Pelee Island; Walter Petrichyn and Lix Sellick at CJAM 91.5 FM; Stephanie Barnhard at Windsor Endowment for the Arts; Kyle Asquith, Garth Rennie, Mary Popovich, Martin Deck, and Dean Carson at the University of Windsor; Josh Gardner at Cinema Lamont; Jason Hulce at Klever Design; Andrea Slavik, Gustave Morin, Jenny Kimmerly, and Board at Common Ground Gallery; Julia Yezbick and Benjamin Gaydos at Mothlight Microcinema; Kristen Gallerneaux and staff at Henry Ford Museum; David Cyrenne at Caesars Windsor; Mary-Jo Sullivan at the Ontario Trillium Foundation; Lori and Paul Kimmerly at Standard Printing;