Current

“Sign O the Times or Buck-in-Hamm-Palace”

Open reception September 18, 2025

“An exhibition challenging conventional printing processes, etching, embossing, transfers, mono prints, etc., with alternative materials and methods of production. Alternative production methods that allude to self-sufficiency, symbolize empowerment and disrupt socially accepted norms and customs.”

-william cordova

Participating artists:

Purvis Young, Mark Bradford, Tony Fitzpatrick, lou Anne colodny, Onajide Shabaka, N. Masani Landfair, Juana Valdez, Yanira Collado, Elia Alba, Wardell Milan, Edra Soto, Rachel Eng, Andre Leon Gray, Mark Gibson, Nathaniel Donnett

Here, There: New Perspectives on the Collection

Illinois State Museum

N. Masani Landfair’s Resilience series is a group of collages

commissioned by the Greenwood Art Project to commemorate the 100th

anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. In 1921, mobs of white residents attacked

and destroyed the homes and businesses of Black Americans in a prosperous

Black neighborhood known as Black Wall Street over the course of two days.

The collages are composed of faded images of the massacre itself, including

photographs of people and ruins, combined with ripped paper pieces, and images

of fire and smoke. Landfair’s collages focus on the children of Greenwood that

survived the historic massacre, a testimonial to their resilience in the face of

unthinkable loss.

“Though these works focus on the children of Greenwood that survived

the massacre, the faces holding resilience through the trauma experienced

are universal. Unfortunately, we see their faces in children present day

surviving the loss of their parents due to unchecked police brutality

and continued racism that remains a threat to our right of freedom

and a quality life” – N. Masani Landfair

The collages were made between 2020 and 2021 at a time when the United States

experienced the compounded effects of a global pandemic and a racial reckoning

that resulted from the murder of George Floyd. For Landfair, the approximation

of these two instances of violence against Black Americans, that took place a

hundred years apart, serves as a reminder that the right to freedom of Black

Americans continues to be under threat.

“Here, There: New Perspectives on the Collection” catalog will be available soon.

CON[TEXT]UAL

at The Pollinator Art Space through September 18, 2025!

Guest curated by Nicole Lampl

This exhibition brings together artists who push language beyond the page. Through carving, stitching, layering, burning, and abstraction, they transform passive words into living material, continuously evolving in the presence of each viewer. Here, words become more than communication: they serve as vessels of memory, carriers of grief, shapers of identity, and forgers of connection. These works remind us that language is never fixed. It shifts with us, carrying our stories in ways both deeply personal and profoundly shared.

press-release-contextual