Cauleen Smith
The Changing Same (video still), 2001
Akosua Adoma Owusu
Intermittent Delight (video still), 2007
Akosua Adoma Owusu
Drexciya (video still), 2010
Dineo Seshee Bopape
the problem of beauty (video still), 2009
Dineo Seshee Bopape
the eclipse will not be visible to the naked eye (video still), 2009
Cauleen Smith
The Changing Same (video still), 2001
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Momme Portrait Series (Heads) (video still), 2008
LaToya Ruby Frazier
A Mother to Hold (video still), 2006
Nov 11, 2010—Mar 13, 2011
Akosua Adoma Owusu / November 11-December 11, 2010
Dineo Seshee Bopape / December 12, 2010-January 13, 2011
LaToya Ruby Frazier / January 14-February 12, 2011
Cauleen Smith / February 13-March 13, 2011
VideoStudio: Changing Same presents the work of four artists—Dineo Seshee Bopape, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Akosua Adoma Owusu and Cauleen Smith—in a series of one-month programs, each focused on a single artist. Changing Same is a shared title for many significant literary works. These include LeRoi Jones’s (now Amiri Baraka) essay “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music)” (1963), in which he used the term to describe an avant-garde Black aesthetic, and scholar Deborah E. McDowell’s compilation of her Black feminist criticism, The Changing Same (1995), which took its title from Jones’s essay. Influenced by an interest in how identity, gender and difference inform artistic practice, the exhibition brings together video and film by four artists who independently explore a set of overlapping themes. Together, their work encourages us to reflect on real and imagined understandings of the past and future, the importance of place and memory, consumer culture and social criticism, and the relationship between artist and viewer.
VideoStudio: Changing Same was organized by Thomas J. Lax, Exhibition Coordinator and Program Associate.