100 Days of Summer

Following her extraordinary “Note to Self” Women’s History Month exhibition at Christie’s London, curator Mashonda Tifrere presents her third annual summer exhibition, “Art Genesis: 100 Days of Summer,” opening on July 26 and closing on August 5 at 3110 West Sunset Blvd. in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The exhibition showcases original works from eight standout, early, and mid-career artists: Arielle Austin, Akilah Watts, Jewel Ham, Lanise Howard, Tawny Chatmon, Victor Ubah, Natalie Lauren, and Ronnie Robinson. The exhibition is a story about love, growth and mystery.

Los Angeles-based Lanise Howard’s work ranges from portraiture to large allegorical figurative paintings. Lagos, Nigeria-based artist Victor Ubah paints stunning contemporary cubism art. And Baltimore’s Tawny Chatmon has been profiled in the Washington Post and featured in Venice Biennale for her work that blends photography and painting and celebrates and honors the beauty of Black childhood and familial bonds.

In addition to this summer curation, “Art Genesis: 100 Days of Summer” will include “Art Genesis: Essentials on Navigating the Art World,” an intimate panel discussion between artists, curators and collectors, on Saturday, August 5, at 6:30 p.m. at the gallery space.

Tifrere explains her inspiration for the exhibition. “When I think about some of my favorite memories, summer always comes to mind,” she says. “The way it makes me feel and my desire for it to last longer. This exhibition is an exploration of joy, love and fantasies coming true.”

About Mashonda Tifrere

Mashonda Tifrere is a New York/Los Angeles-based independent curator who is the Founder of Art LeadHer, a platform dedicated to empowering women in art. She obtained an Art Business degree from Christie’s Education in New York. Art Genesis is an artist service organization dedicated to building a sustainable marketplace for emerging and established entrepreneurial artists. As pioneers in advocacy and professional development, it capitalizes on the intersection of art and enterprise by activating collaborative partnerships and developing innovative resources.

About The Featured Artists:

Arielle Austin

Born in Los Angeles and currently based in Austin, Arielle Austin received her Bachelor of Fine Art (emphasis Graphic Design) in 2013 from California State University, Northridge. Her work sits in homes across the globe and she has exhibited at The Carver (San Antonio), Elisabet Ney Museum (Austin), George Washington Carver Museum (Austin), The Other Art Fair (Dallas), Gallery 440 (Fort Worth), and Commerce Gallery (Lockhart).

Akilah Watts

Akilah Watts is a Barbadian Contemporary Artist who received her BFA in 2017 and went on to participate in Prizm Art Fair of that same year. Watts works with a number of media to create multiple bodies of work and has exhibited locally (Barbados) and internationally (New York, San Francisco, Miami, etc.). She has been featured online in exhibitions, auctions, articles, and shops such as Artsy, Les Îles and Good Black Art. Watts is currently working on a collection focusing on her relationship with natural hair and her Caribbean roots, as well as “Moments From My Island Home” which bridges the gap between the realistic and the idealistic view of her island Barbados.

Jewel Ham

Jewel Ham is a multidisciplinary visual artist, curator, and educator interested in using her practice as a means of reparation. With attention to the unapologetic wit and innovation inherent to the Black interior, she approaches narrative portraiture as an act of resistance. She is a Summa Cum Laude Fine Arts graduate from Howard University, with an interest in reimagining liberation, particularly through lenses of wellness and embodiment. Her solo exhibit “i said what i said” was held at Stony Island Arts Bank, an archival library and museum reimagined by Theaster Gates; while her solo exhibition “keep it cute” was held at Cierra Britton Gallery, the first all womxn of color gallery in New York City.

Lanise Howard

The Los Angeles-based artist earned her Design BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2020. She says, “I was originally interested in re-writing a narrative where Black figures were thriving and meeting new challenges, as though they were chameleons, ebbing and changing with every new obstacle. Therefore, the thinking was that this place would be a space of new possibility. The idea of change then becomes an element of the work. My work often presents hypotheses and tries to offer possible answers through engagement and inquiry.”

Tawny Chatmon

Artist Tawny Chatmon is a photography-based artist born in Tokyo who currently resides in Maryland. In 2010, the then-commercial photographer’s outlook and relationship with her camera shifted when she began photographing her father’s battle with cancer, consequently documenting the disease unexpectedly taking his life. With her father’s passing, she gradually began to look to her camera less as a device for monetary gain and more as a way for her work to serve a higher vocation. Chatmon creates imagery that celebrates and honors the beauty of Black childhood and familial bonds while at times addressing the absence and exclusion of the Black body in Western art. She has been featured in the Washington Post and Shondaland.

Victor Ubah

Based in Lagos, Nigeria, 22 year old Victor Ubah is the embodiment of Contemporary Cubism and Afrofuturism as he explores the inner workings of his subjects’ identities as a key driver in his work. In these figurative, typically two dimensional compositions, what stands out is the abstraction in the space where the subject’s skin is visible. The artist generates the figure through an assemblage of geometric polygons that do the work of presenting the viewer with an intentional request to look at things in different perspectives. What’s more, the component of the brightly colored and timeless garments worn by each of the subjects adds a level of complexity and sophistication to the works. The artist has appeared in several group exhibitions mainly in Lagos, and is quickly growing in the roster of promising African Contemporary artists. Watch an interview about Victor’s solo show in London, HYPNAGOGIC.

Natalie Lauren

In the spirit of unrelenting audacity inherited from her hometown, the same womb that birthed Black Wall Street, Natalie Lauren is a multi-sensory storyteller. She has come to create art and sounds that disrupts the silence, to invite people who dance in its darkness, to find the light buried inside. Her images and songs are full in the presence of strength and weakness. This is a multi-sensory healing experience. One of mind, body, and soul that she calls “Narrative Art Therapy.” Music and Image offers us an entrance into empathy. This artistic empathy not only seeks to listen but to advocate.

Ronnie Robinson

Ronnie Robinson’s energetic, expressive portraits are comfortably ambiguous; collapsing time and space to feel familiar yet unfamiliar. Robinson works from photographs as well as his memory to capture portraits of people who would or could have been, with an emotional intensity that is matched only by the earnestness of his brush work. Watch a short documentary about Ronnie’s work.