Fri 1/27 @ 7-9:30PM
moCa Cleveland has a lot of exciting things going on this year, and it lifts the curtain on them this week, with an opening night celebration.
The four shows going on view demonstrate moCa’s increased commitment to forming community partnerships and reaching out to different groups in the community.
Illinois artist Nina Chanel Abney produces work in a variety of media that uses defined, almost cartoonish lines, patterns and strong colors to depict characters in a variety of situations. Her show, Big Butch Synergy (half of a body of new work, with Big Butch Energy on view at ICA Miami), depicts masculine Black women and others who defy typical gender roles. At moCa she’ll be creating what’s described as a “site responsive monumental work” on the museum’s main floor, along with a series of large-scale paintings in one of the galleries.
Artist Sam Falls’ We Are Dust and Shadow features large-scale paintings and sculptures made in collaboration with nature in national parks across the country, incorporating its effects into his works. In Cleveland, he’ll be working with the Cleveland Botanical Garden and Holden Arboretum to use Northeast Ohio materials in a new ceramic work.
Photographer Amber N. Ford goes outside her usual practice for Someone, Somewhere, Something, in which she uses sound as her medium to share stories of grief, trauma and loss, which she collected during her winter/spring 2022 residency at the museum. The pieces will be audible at various locations in the facility to create the effect of sound collages.
Finally, Bruno Casiano’s Pieces of Me is the first in a collaboration between moCa and the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, focusing on Latino heritage through the arts. Casiano’s works use painting, stenciling, collage and found fabrics to explore his Puerto Rican background and his memories of growing up in a small town on the island. His abstract works evoke those memories, incorporating the shapes of caves, lizards, mangos, mountains and other images of his past.
DJ Red-I will be performing at the opening reception, with a conversation with Sam Falls and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor David Raskin taking place from 7:30-8:30pm. It’s free and open to all. Go here for more information.