Art by Shani Peters. Curated by Petrushka Bazin.
Inspired by the political illustrations and impact of artist and Black Panthers Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, New York-based artist Shani Peters’ work responds to the persisting schismatic elements that plague the African-American community to date. Looking at African-American families as a microcosm for the state of the community at-large, Peters uses the stories and images of both fictive and non-fictive African-American icons to revisit history in order to propose new endings. The disproportionate incarceration rate of Black men and the subsequent absence in their homes set the stage for her investigations.
In these bodies of work, she includes Douglas-inspired silkscreened prints; stills from her comedic video collages, which put characters from America’s favorite African-American television families in conversation with Black political leaders and activists from the1960s and 1970s; and digitally printed stick puppets, which appear in her latest video Battle for The Hearts and Minds (of Future Revolutionaries Everywhere).
For the next two weeks, Peters’ images occupy our computer screens. Similar to Douglas, she uses this public forum to address the realities of brokenness and the possibilities of wholeness within the African-American community. Her visual meditations remind us that the prison-industrial complex is real and Black fatherless families will increase if love and racial unity are not prioritized.
-Petrushka Bazin
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Shani Peters received her B.A. from Michigan State University and her M.F.A. from The City College of New York. Her work has been exhibited and screened throughout New York, including group exhibitions at Rush Arts Gallery, the International Print Center New York, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She has completed residencies at The Center for Book Arts and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space program. She is currently participating in the Bronx Museum’s 2010-11 Artist in the Marketplace program and is a Keyholder resident at the Lower East Side Printshop. Peters also works as a teaching artist with various community-based organizations in New York.
Petrushka Bazin is an independent curator and artist based in New York. She is currently the Program Associate and Exhibition Coordinator for The Laundromat Project, a community-based public art non-profit offering art programs in coin-ops throughout New York, and was the 2009-2010 Curatorial Fellow at The Kitchen, an interdisciplinary arts organization that supports and presents the work of innovative artists working in various disciplines.