Santeka, High Heels, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
(NEWARK, NJ) -- Shine Portrait Studio at Express Newark, located at Rutgers University-Newark, presents "In Pursuit of Beauty: Imaging Closets in Newark and Beyond," a solo presentation of new site-specific work by Deborah Willis, organized by Shine Portrait Studio Curator-in-Residence, Kalia Brooks Nelson. This project marks Shine’s first large-scale artistic endeavor and, given the space’s historic function as James Van Der Zee’s professional photography studio in 1911, "In Pursuit" continues a tradition of radical examination of portraiture and self-identification. The exhibit will be on view from March 27 through December 21, 2018.
The “closet” in the American-English vernacular has long been a metaphor used to describe the psychological parts of ourselves that are kept most private, or hidden from public view. As an expression, it points to the zone of our secrets, or the site of our deepest vulnerabilities. The work shown In Pursuit of Beauty explores these innermost aspects of ourselves, symbolized through closet space, and how we perform our identities based on how we desire to image ourselves to the world.
Willis photographed the closets of residents in Newark, towns, cities in the surrounding area, as well as New York City to examine the complex relationship between self-fashioning and identity in contemporary culture. The resulting photographs expand on her influential work as an artist, scholar and educator, studying and creating photographs that reflect on personal and collective memories of beauty. Through her investigation of the closet, as a site where beauty is enacted through the representation of our private and public selves, she subverts its implication of hiding something and celebrates the closet as a space of empowerment for individuals authoring their own identities contrary to social or cultural convention.
Deborah Willis, PhD, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and exhibiting photographer, where she teaches courses on photography and imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation, contemporary women photographers and beauty. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. Professor Willis received the NAACP Image Award in 2014 for her co-authored book (with Barbara Krauthamer) Envisioning Emancipation. Other notable projects include The Black Female Body A Photographic History, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers – 1840 to the Present, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, a NAACP Image Award Literature Winner, and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her ‘Hottentot’.
Kalia Brooks Nelson, PhD, is a New York based independent curator and educator. Brooks Nelson is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and at Parsons in the School of Art, Media and Technology. Brooks Nelson holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetics and Art Theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. She received her M.A. in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts in 2006, and was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program 2007/2008. She has served as a consulting curator with the City of New York through the Department of Cultural Affairs and Gracie Mansion Conservancy. Brooks Nelson is also currently an ex-officio trustee on the Board of the Museum of the City of New York.
Shine Portrait Studio at Express Newark is located at 54 Halsey Street, 2nd Floor in Newark, New Jersey.
Shine Portrait Studio is a group of programs and community-engaged projects activated through a working portrait photography studio that facilitates and supports the expression and self-representation of the Newark, New Jersey community. Shine is a cutting-edge photography studio with state-of-the-art equipment and technical support free to use for our Newark and regionally based artists, photographers, stylists, designers, entrepreneurs the entire creative community, as well as visiting artists and curators engaged in kindred projects.
Express Newark is a university–community collaboratory in Newark’s historic Hahne & Company building. At Express Newark, artists and community residents collaborate, experiment, and innovate in partnership with Rutgers University – Newark faculty, staff, and students with the goals of engaging in public work, creative practice, and democratic dialogue in order to promote positive transformation.
Rutgers University-Newark is a diverse, urban, public research university that is an anchor institution in New Jersey’s largest city. Approximately 12,000 students are currently enrolled at its 38-acre campus in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered through the Newark College of Arts and Sciences, University College, the Graduate School-Newark, Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, Rutgers Law School, the School of Criminal Justice, and the School of Public Affairs and Administration. RU-N is in and of a city and region where its work on local challenges undertaken with partners from all sectors resonates powerfully throughout an urbanizing world.
