STUDIO INCUBATOR PROGRAM
After prototyping our artist incubator program in South LA after three years (2019-2022) working with 10 local Black creatives and providing workshops and salons with local organizations we have learned that it is not enough to engage artists in their personal development to participate in the art market and in navigating traditional art spaces.
Creatives must see themselves within the civic fabric of their communities and the local arts and culture ecosystem must be fortified economically through the community development of the neighborhoods that they are situated in.
As a result, ZEAL has decided to evolve the artist incubator into a community studio incubator that is comprehensive in not just addressing the artistic production needs of artists, but more importantly the community and economic development of Black businesses and cultural institutions that results in a sustainable arts ecosystem and community.
As a result, in partnership with ITS-IN-SCOPE, SOLA Contemporary, and Residency Art Gallery, ZEAL is activating Residency’s space in downtown Inglewood with exhibitions, experiences, community events, and critical conversations to foster community growth.
Curator: Auttrianna Ward
Curatorial Statement
In the midst of the imagined is a gathering of four Los Angeles based artists and creatives inspired by the language of the future and restoration. Restoration of our imagining of ourselves.
In 2000, Lucille Clifton asked us, “who among us can imagine ourselves unimagined.” And as we’ve moved forward and backwards in this American Landscape, where are we in shaping this imagined place?
To exist as a black person in the Americas is to hold on and break down the larger imagination of ourselves while creating newer futures. It is in the midst of this imagination that Nani Jordan, Leah King, Gbenga Komolafe and House of Aama ask us to examine and place ourselves.
IN THE MIDST OF THE IMAGINED will be open from May 20th - July 3rd at Residency: Project Space. The exhibition is available for viewing Friday - Sunday from 12-5pm or by appointment - book here.
MEET THE ARTISTS
HOUSE OF AAMA
House of Aama is the spiritual expression of mother and daughter design duo, Rebecca Henry and Akua Shabaka in material form.
House of Aama explores the folkways of the Black experience by designing timeless garments with nostalgic references informed by historical research, archival analysis, and storytelling. We aim to evoke dialogue, social commentary and conversations around heritage, remembrance and shed light on nuanced histories.
House of Aama presents its fashion items as an offering for raw, primal energy to exist in physical form.
GBENGA KOMOLAFE
Gbenga Komolafe is Nigerian artist based in Los Angeles exploring the intersections of sculpture, film, and site-specific installation. He draws inspiration from the traditional African ritual practices rooted from my Yoruba ancestors and the innovative craftsmanship of mid-20th-century queer and Black American communities. Through introspective and research-driven practice, he continues the often unrewarded labor of his queer and diasporic lineage, to envision and actualize radical futures through both embrace of tradition and continual experimentation.
LEAH KING
Leah King is an artist, musician, and educator based in Los Angeles. She creates audio installations and interactive visual art works that explore race, gender, power, and queerness through an afrofuturist lens. By incorporating archival family photos and first-hand interviews, her layered collages and soundscapes feature historical images, religious texts, layered vocal harmonies, and candid observations, to create new methods of storytelling.
NANDI JORDAN
Nandi Jordan is a multidisciplinary visual artist interested in exposing the complexities and contradictions in her everyday Black life. Trained as a sociologist and self-taught as an artist, Jordan’s art practice weaves the personal with the cultural and historical, creating thought-provoking juxtapositions of image and text. She found her way to art while earning her doctorate in sociology, often cutting and repurposing seminal texts and family photographs as a way of finding her own visual language. Her art uses both personal and found images alongside book pages to interrogate her own life experiences within the context of the broader Black experience.
EVENTS
Any questions about this project or exhibit space can be forwarded to creative@zeal.coop .