August 17, 2021

SPACES OPENS THREE NEW EXHIBITIONS EXPLORING ARCHIVE, JOY, AND COMMUNITY

(Cleveland, OH)-- This Friday SPACES opens three new exhibitions featuring local and national artists throughout the galleries. Davon Brantley (Cleveland, OH) and Asmaa Walton (Detroit, MI) will be featured in the Front Gallery; Nastassja Swift (Richmond, VA) will be exhibiting in the Gund Gallery; and Nazanin Noroozi (New York, NY) will be showcasing a new installation and short film in Toby’s Vault.

Art History brings together the work of Brantley with the collection of Black Art Library. Brantley's work draws inspiration from Renaissance and Baroque art, often centering a central figure, corrupted by shadow elements and surreal shifts in tone and style. Asmaa Walton, the curator, archivist, and educator behind Black Art Library, presents a library of nearly 500 volumes of Black art catalogues.

blue/Black/baby smiles,

singin’ to an old river-

we hear you coming

by Swift unfolds as a youth led parade and performance that celebrates self, interwoven communities, and the presence of joy and paradise within Black spaces. The use of masks, indigo, movement, and poetry, speak to spirituality, water, migration, and the Blues - remnants of Blackness. The title, drawn from a poem written by the artist, presents a new evolution of the artist’s repertoire.

Finally, within Toby’s Vault, Noroozi’s The Riptide shares a visual short story based on archival Super-8 videos captured by Noroozi's father in post-Revolution Iran. In this 4-minute film, handmade cinema is used as a medium to transform personal and family archives to re-create a narrative told by others addressing trauma and displacement.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, August 20th from 5-9PM. SPACES and moCa Cleveland have partnered for a series of events related to Art History, the first of which will be an artist talk between Brantley and Walton, moderated by Michael Russell of Museum of Creative Human Art, which will be held during the opening reception from 6-7P. On Saturday, August 21st, from 4-6PM, SPACES will host an artist talk between Swift and participating youth involved in the larger Parade Project. The Parade Project will be a community parade which will trail from the garden at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City and will lead to the edge of Lake Erie. This event will be held on August 28th from 6-8P.

The galleries will be open by request to members of the press on August 19th, and will be open to the general public on August 20th at 5PM. SPACES is located at 2900 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, OH. Gallery Hours are 12PM-5PM Wednesday-Saturday. Guests are required to wear masks and maintain social distance from staff and others as much as possible. For more information, visit www.SPACEScle.org, call 216.621.2314, or email contact@SPACEScle.org.