(NEWARK, NJ) -- Spanning over seventy years of artistic practice, and evidencing, in glorious vivid colors, her unwavering commitment to the radically humane, Gladys Barker Grauer, Speaking Her Mind: Then and Now begins with Grauer’s radicalization as a student in the 1940's at the Art Institute of Chicago and weaves in and out of moments before and after that helped shape her activism and inform her work. The exhibit, curated by Adrienne Wheeler, is on display at Gallery Aferro in Newark from November 11 through January 12, 2018.
Grauer is a prolific artist who works across multiple media including painting, sculpture, weaving, assemblage, collage, and even doll making. Curator Adrienne Wheeler writes: “Gladys decided I should curate the exhibition. Initially, the exhibition was proposed as a retrospective, to which the artist replied, "I don't want a retrospective, I'm making new work", I only mention this for purposes of context, Gladys Barker Grauer is ninety-four years old and maintains an active and vibrant art practice.”
This large-scale exhibition brings together a collection of work new and old wherein Grauer tackles issues around the injustices of the criminal justice system, and humanizes those who have been dehumanized and marginalized by racism, poverty and gender bias. Grauer writes: “Artists are recorders of events, society, and the culture in which they live. My art expresses my reaction to and interaction with the struggle of all people for survival. This struggle is motivated by the optimism of beautiful people for their intellectual, financial, social, political, individual, and physical survival.”
Gladys was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1923 and grewup on Chicago's South Side. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved to New York City where she worked as a freelance artist, became involved in civil rights and political movements, and met and married Solomon Grauer. They moved to Newark, NJ in 1951, raised a family, and continued their community and political involvement. In 1960, she ran as the Socialist Worker’s Party’s US Senate nominee. In 1972 Gladys fulfilled a long-time dream and opened the Aard Studio Gallery in Newark’s South Ward. Through her community-based art gallery Gladys helped launch the careers and critical evaluation of numerous black and brown artists. Her gallery addressed the needs of artists of color by providing a forum for mutual support, professional networking, exhibition and selling of their art, and helped set the stage for the larger appreciation of the creativity of artists of color. Those early tentative steps led penultimately to the Newark Museum’s 1983 exhibition Emerging and Established. This pointed the way to the future of visual arts in Newark and a higher standard of cultural literacy in New Jersey.
Gladys’ commitment, support and promotion of the arts reached beyond the walls of Aard Studio Gallery to the larger community. She was a founding member of Black Woman in Visual Perspective, New Jersey Chapter of the National Conference of Artists and the Newark Arts Council, and served on the Boards of Theater of Universal Images, City Without Walls, and the Newark Arts Council, and mentored young art students. Gladys taught commercial art in the Essex County Vocational High School system in Newark. Over the past 60 years Gladys’ artwork has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. Since 2006 Gladys has completed four murals in Newark. She continues to inspire the next generation of artists and to creatively express through visual discord, her social, political and personal views. Her work is in many private collections as well as with the Newark Museum, Montclair Museum, Zimmerli Art Museum, Newark Public Library, Morris Museum, Noyes Museum, National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Library of the National Museum of American Art, New Jersey State Museum, Morgan State University, and Johnson & Johnson.
Third in a 2017-18 quartet of solo shows at Gallery Aferro by women artists of color from different generations, the exhibit and the series derived in part from Artistic Director Evonne M. Davis’ interest in recognizing artists who were making socially engaged work before this kind of artmaking had a label, or was enjoying a moment as a “trend”. Grauer’s significant and varied contributions as a culture worker- educator, organizer, curator, originator, agitator, mentor-must be illuminated and honored because they inform our current moment of #blacklivesmatter and the curatorial fight against erasure in regards to both the hyperlocal, and the global. A longform interview between artist and curator, conducted to enhance the visitor experience and the cultural record of Grauer’s incredible life, will be published and distributed at the opening reception and online on November 11.
Grauer's work is unapologetic, without sentimentality or sensationalism, there are no gimmicks, just straight talk, Speaking Her Mind: Then and Now. Educators and activity planners are encouraged to contact the gallery to book a free tour of the exhibits for their youth or adult groups.
About the curator: Adrienne Wheeler is a multi-media artist, independent curator, arts educator, and advocate for social justice. Through her practice, she addresses the injustices that plague society, particularly those injustices affecting the lives of women and children. Wheeler's work references various Central and West African ancestral, spiritual, and cultural traditions and investigates the ways in which these traditions (often misunderstood, marginalized, and demonized) have stood as tools of resistance against the inhumanity of slavery and other forms of oppression. These works include wood sculpture, mixed media installation, glass book arts, photography and video. Wheeler's current works in progress are papier-mache Njorowe or "Belly Masks", (the body plate of an important female ancestral masquerade belonging to the Makonde People of Southeastern Tanzania and Northern Mozambique), and narratives associated with the white dress. This exploration of the white dress began in 2015 with Provisions, a series of artist books inspired by recordings from the Krueger-Scott African-American Oral History Collection, consisting of over 200 audiocassette recordings of interviews with African-American residents of Newark, NJ who migrated to the city between 1910 and 1970 during the Great Migration. Wheeler, whose mother migrated from the South during the Great Migration, continues to use images of the white dress made by her mother in 1942 for her elementary school graduation; she continues the work through interrogation of the tangible and intangible that sustain people, their traditions, spirituality, and community.
Gallery Aferro is located at 73 Market Street in Newark New Jersey.
