In Conversation: Karice Mitchell and Nya Lewis

Hamilton Artists Inc. invites you to an artist talk between Karice Mitchell and Nya Lewis. Mitchell's photo-based installation, entitled take care, was featured on our exterior Cannon Project Wall until June 2022. A free print and digital publication, featuring writing by Nya Lewis, will be launched in conjunction with this event. In her essay on Mitchell's project, Lewis eloquently writes:

Mitchell’s installation, take care, concerns the historical exploitation of Black women’s bodies, central to the systematic construction of the “other”. Giving Black women license to exercise full sexual autonomy, Mitchell re-appropriates and reclaims Black erotic imagery, subverting dehumanizing stereotypes to redefine and reimagine possibilities for Black sexuality beyond its historical construction.

Mitchell critically engages with a landmark era of Black American pop culture, collecting magazines from the 60s and 70s. In an intuitive process, she reworks their pages using visual redaction to simultaneously create ambiguity and make visible signifiers of Black culture and coding. take care is a digitally manipulated reflection of Black iconography, acrylic nails on dark skin, a tender and intimate glimpse of a Black femme physique. Centered on the billboard is Mitchell’s instructive gesture to “take care”.

Join us for what will undoubtedly be a thoughtful and incisive conversation between Mitchell and Lewis on their respective practices and the role of images in the liberation of Black womanhood and sexuality. Audience Q&A will follow. Registration is free and open now through Zoom.

A digital copy of Against a porous archive: Re-imagining Black erotica by Nya Lewis written on occasion of Karice Mitchel's take care exhibition is now available.