March 25 - September 23, 2023
Gate D31 Gallery, North Terminal, Concourse D
MIA Galleries presents MOTIC, a solo exhibition by Miami-based portraitist, muralist, and printmaker Charles Humes Jr. For over 40 years, Humes’s vast body of work across various mediums has focused on chronicling the life, struggles, triumphs, and character of Black people, African Americans, and people of color. Influenced as a young man in the ‘70s and ‘80s by important cultural movements such as Black is Beautiful and Black Pride, Humes’s work follows a rich tradition of former African American artists that expressed the everyday life and conditions of Black people.
The exhibition features a collection of large-scale mixed-media works created between 2010 – 2021 that question and address critical economic and societal issues and persistent conditions plaguing inner-city communities. The work in MOTIC is a combination of collage, drawing, and painting that explores the psyche and state of the Black experience in Miami while paying homage to lost lives and historical figures.
Some of these works were created using discarded materials Humes found in his neighborhood, such as large commercial vinyl banners with grommets the artist utilized to make his “Tapestries,” a series of mixedmedia portraitures and assemblages that hang like traditional paintings on a wall. Humes’s technique for his collages, which he calls “mosaic collages,” are balanced arrangements that consist of cutting and pasting tiny pieces of newspapers, magazines, and fabric, resulting in images lined with lively textures and unexpected juxtapositions. The larger-than-life figurative forms and the emphasis on elongated stylized angles and shapes symbolize the multifaceted condition, complexity, and predicament of the people and the community the artist pays homage to.
Ana Gentrified, 2021, mixed-media collage on vinyl canvas, 48 x 72 in.
Ms. Mary, 2021, mixed-media painting on vinyl canvas, 48 x 72 in.
MOTIC is an acronym for Matters of the Inner City * (2020-2021), a body of work consis ting of over 50 images, some of which are exhibited here, inspired by Humes’s determination to bring to light matters such as old age, extreme poverty, racial inequity, homelessness, and the eventual displacement and loss of culture caused by gentrification and urban renewa in his hometown, Liberty City - one of Miami’s most significant historically Black neighborhoods.
*Matters of the Inner City is also the name given to the artist ’s exhibition at The African American Heritage Cultural Arts Center Amadlozi Gallery in Miami, Florida (December 16, 2021 – February 22, 2022) and curated by Donnamarie Baptis te, with funding by The Ellies, Miami ’s visual arts awards presented by Oolite Arts.
Artist Biography
Miami-born, Charles Humes Jr. comes from a rich family heritage of Grand Turk, Exuma, and the Eleuthera Islands of the Bahamas. A nationally acclaimed painter, printmaker, draftsman, muralist, and educator, Humes has been a professional fine artist for over forty years. Influenced as a youth by the Civil Rights Movements of the ‘70s and ‘8 0s, in which social perception and status were based on the color of one’s skin or the place one calls home, Humes’s early expressions found a voice championing the plight of the homeless, urban conditions and stereotypes predicated on socio-political, educational, economic prejudices and bigotry.
Humes received many national and regional awards for his signature depictions of the African American condition. His studies include Florida State University, Florida International University, and Dade County Junior College, earning arts degrees in Painting, Printmaking, and Arts Education. A recipient of the State of Florida’s Individual Artist Grant in painting, a Smithsonian Southern Arts Federation Printmaking Fellow, an Arvida Bakehouse Arts Complex Fellow and Residency, a Florida State Artist Fellow, and is presently a Visual Arts Scholar-Residency at the University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies. Humes’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries and universities throughout the United States.
Humes has created acclaimed multi-media large-scale mosaic murals for arts in public places throughout the State of Florida and is considered a master technician in glass, shell, and ceramic mosaics. A member of the NCA (National Conference of Artists), NEA (National Educators A ssociation), FEA (Florida Educators A ssociation), DEA (Dade Educators A ssociation), UTD (United Teachers of Dade), and the Kuumba Artist A ssociation of Florida, Inc., the Post-Kuumba Collective Organization and is a founding member of the Libert y Cit y Artis t Exchange.
A Homeless Supper, 2020, mixed-media collage, 3 6 x 72 in.
Front Cover: Pork & Beans Please, 2021, oil on stretched canvas, 48 x 60 in.
Back Cover: Awash, 2021, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
