bahia reverb: artists and place, 2023-2024

Art + Practice in collaboration with the California African American Museum (CAAM),  Los Angeles

Artists: Sandra Brewster, Gerald Cyrus, Rik Freeman, Juan Erman Gonzalez, Mark Steven Greenfield, Karen Hampton, Germaine Ingram, Precious Lovell, Frances Tre Lawrence, Tim Whiten.

September 16, 2023 – March 2, 2024 

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Bahia Reverb: Artists and Place presents the work of ten artists, all from North America and of African descent, who were fellows at the Sacatar Institute, located on Itaparica Island across from the capital of Bahia, a state in Northeast Brazil. Bahia was the first point of entry of enslaved Africans into the Americas and remains the center of Afro-Brazilian culture to this day. Focusing on each artist’s process, the exhibition features artworks initiated either before, during, or after their residencies at the Sacatar Institute, and it reflects on how these experiences shaped their vision and impacted their practice as they engaged in myriad ways with Bahia. Organized in thematic groupings, the artworks encompass overlapping themes of displacement and forced migration; mythology and history; colonialism and resistance; faith and spirituality; environmental justice and inequality; and identity and community building. Driven by a desire to create new forms of understanding, Bahia Reverb highlights the uniqueness and importance of Bahia in keeping alive African traditions, drawing parallels with museum audiences so they can better see themselves and their diversity and envision unlimited possibilities. Through an investigation of place, memory, and culture, Bahia Reverb celebrates black identities, pluralities, and intersections. PDF