RASHAADNEWSOME

http://www.mmoca.org/exhibitions/exhibits/rashaad-newsome-icon

On view in the museum’s Imprint Gallery, this exhibition focuses solely on the video-based component of the artist’s larger practice, and highlights works that showcase his engagement with the dance phenomenon of voguing. Although voguing emerged from Harlem’s queer ballroom scene during the 1960s and 70s, the dance style entered the cultural mainstream in 1990 with Madonna’s iconic music video “Vogue,” now remembered as a notorious instance of cultural appropriation. Newsome, however, celebrates the true origins of voguing, thereby reclaiming a vital cultural history by giving it back to the queer Black and Latino community from which it arose.

The exhibition includes Untitled (2008) and Untitled—New Way (2009), two of Newsome’s earlier works that document contemporary vogue culture: the artist filmed dancers’ vogue improvisations, edited the footage to isolate certain dance elements, and asked the dancers re-perform their movements based on his video-edited choreography. Also on view are two of the artist’s more recent video works, ICON (2014) and Stop Playing in My Face (2016), both of which weave together the exuberant pageantry of voguing with digitally-rendered backdrops of glittering architectural spaces. At a moment when individuals of all races are questioning sex and gender-based binaries, Newsome’s videos offer a timely examination of cultural power and agency within the context of gender, sexuality, and race.

https://www.mcnayart.org/exhibitions/upcoming/rashaad-newsome-knot

Combining baroque grandeur, hip-hop swagger, and black and LGBTQ subcultures, Rashaad Newsome creates evocative works of art that highlights fantasy, capitalistic obsessions, and systemic oppressions. The opulence of fashion magazines and society culture is subverted through the vocabulary of voguing, the New York ballroom scene, and New Orleans bounce music. Newsome applies a keen awareness of art historical and alternative cultural sources to offer pointed commentaries on contemporary culture and identity politics. On the McNay’s AT&T Lobby wall, the artist presents the video KNOT, 2014, floating over an entire wall wrapped in his striking Jungle Gardenia print.

The Conductor combines clips culled from rap music videos with selections from composer Carl Orff’s classical masterpiece “Carmina Burana,” a piece of music that has itself been widely sampled in pop culture. The music video footage has been edited to isolate and remix shots of the rap artists’ hand gestures so they appear to be conducting Orff’s orchestra, a juxtaposition that allows Newsome to playfully break down boundaries between seemingly opposed cultural forms. As part of the presentation of this work, June 2nd and 3rd Newsome has invited New York Hip Hop Mc. Controverse to write and perform new material inspired by the installation.

http://mocajacksonville.unf.edu/Exhibitions/Featured/Synthesize-Art-and-Music/

On Sunday, April 2nd Rashaad Newsome received the Artist & Edition Award at the Baltimore Contemporary Print Fair held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Established in 2002, the Artist & Edition Award recognizes the work of a leading artist or master printer who has made a substantial contribution to the imagery, themes, and techniques of printmaking today.