An exhibition featuring the work of Helina Metaferia, visiting assistant professor and artist-in-residence in Critical Race Studies, will appear at MSU’s (SCENE) Metrospace, from Feb. 8 to March 29, at 110 Charles St., East Lansing.
This solo, interdisciplinary exhibit, titled “By Way of Revolution,” engages collage, assemblage, performance, video and participation to resurrect the spirit of social justice movements of the past in order to inform our present social-political movement.
Metaferia has been working on the exhibit during her time at MSU as part of the Department of Art, Art History and Design’s Critical Race Studies Residency program and has focused her time in the MSU Library’s special collections radicalism archives as well as collaborating among students and faculty women of color groups on campus.
An opening reception for the exhibition will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Feb. 8, at (SCENE) Metrospace, with an artist talk scheduled for 7 p.m., Feb. 20, at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.
As part of her (SCENE) Metrospace exhibition, Metaferia will perform at 7 p.m., March 27, at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. A schedule of programs also will take place at (SCENE) Metrospace throughout the duration of Metaferia’s exhibition. These programs are being organized by Metaferia in conjunction with MSU and community groups such as Black Lives Matter of Michigan, Women of Color Initiatives, Sister Circle, Black Student Union, Women of Color Embodied Knowledge Forum and the creators of the MSU Blackbook.
Metaferia’s interdisciplinary art and research is devoted to asserting the black body into sites of systemic oppression, including institutional spaces, art history, gentrified communities or land marked by historic trauma. She constantly reflects on the notions of “home” and how our racial and gendered body complicates this. She often uses her own body in her practice and will be working with the bodies of others for this exhibition through participatory practices, expanding upon her background in painting and drawing to include process-based performative actions.
Metaferia is one of two dynamic artists invited to MSU’s campus for the 2018-2019 academic year as part of the Department of Art, Art History and Design’s Critical Race Studies Residency program.
Established in 2017, the Critical Race Studies Residency Program empowers artistic creativity that drives cultural transformation through shared engagement with creative practice. As part of the Department of Art, Art History and Design, this residency program enriches the life of the greater Lansing community by creating opportunities for shared experiences that cultivate diversity and facilitate practices of inclusion through art and design.