NOMAD GALLERY is pleased to present: Counting On You, Counting On Me,
a two-woman exhibition curated by gallery artist Lavar Munroe.
This exhibition features Ethiopian born artist Helena Metaferia and Bahamian born artist Alexandria Robinson.
Through the piecing together of collaged material ranging from paper to steel, the artists use their work as poignant forms
of critique, reflection and critical inquiry.
Notions surrounding ideas ranging from virtue, strength, and struggle are seamlessly interwoven in the collaged paper
works by Helena. Ideas surrounding labor, maternity, and matriarchy are intracule to the work of Alexandria. Both artists
will present large format pieces that address the grandiosity of womanhood while celebrating self, family, and lineage.
This exhibition was curated as a direct response to Phenomenal Woman : Four Poems Celebrating Women (1995) by Maya Angelou:
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Helina Metaferia
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My work combines archival research with performative gestures and transforms history into mythology in order to interrogate
racism, sexism, and notions of Western exceptionalism. In some works, I integrate found art periodicals that were published
in the 1980's (the decade of my birth) with photographic stills from my recent performances, creating an avatar persona that reclaims
a space in art history for under-recognized and marginalized women/artists of color. Playing with the 1980's trending re-interest
in "primitivism," I use my Ethiopian-American female body as a way to reclaim that gaze and decolonize the appropriation of black culture.
In other works, I integrate images of civil rights activism sourced from Black Panther newspapers with images of women of color
in gestures of historic resistance -- standing, sitting, and kneeling. These collages are forms of affirmations that summon
the survival methods and tactics used throughout activism movements of the past, and applies them to today's effort toward social justice.
BIO:
Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, installation, and collage. She has exhibited her work
at venues including Museum of African Diaspora (San Francisco), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and Museum of Contemporary
Art Detroit (Detroit). Helina completed her MFA in 2015 at Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her artist residencies include Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MacDowell
Colony, Yaddo, Ox-Bow, MASS MoCA, and NARS Foundation, among others. She has taught in the BFA and MFA programs
at the San Francisco Art Institute, Michigan State University, and Parsons Fine Arts. She is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Gateway
Fellow / Assistant Professor at Brown University and lives and works in New York City.
WORKS: pdf
Alexandria Robinson pdf