We're All in This Together | Carrie Mae Weems, Hank Willis Thomas and N. Dash
January 5 - February 3, 2008

We're All In This Together features three artists who are reinterpreting history by linking it to a new narrative. Carrie Mae Weems, in her series May Days Long Forgotten, creates a modern day, turn-of-the-century pastoral that references both the historical and the traditional. Recalling photographic stylings from the nineteenth century in a tableau of portrait-like images, May Days Long Forgotten "reminds us that struggle is everyday business, and that revolution is merely about possibility." At the same time, Weems contends, May Days Long Forgotten is a critical examination of who is to be seen and how, as well as about inserting the black presence in the world¡ªasserting it as the norm and not as racial politics. "It is about embracing the breadth of this humanity that comes through this brown skin."

Carrie Mae Weems, "May Days", Three chromogenic color prints, 21.5 in. diameter (54.6 cm. diameter) from May Days Long Forgotten, 2003; Courtesy of the Artist and Charles Guice Contemporary

Up until the 1940s, blacks were largely invisible in consumer advertising and as a marketing group to corporate America. By 1968, the apex of the civil rights era, this position had changed significantly, and it is that year which serves as the point of departure for Hank Willis Thomas' eighty-piece series, Unbranded. Using print advertisements from 1968 to the present, Thomas removes the original texts and logos, only presenting the figures and characters in the ad. The remaining scenarios - which are at times intriguing, awkward, and absurd - reveal the visual language strategies of the advertisers, as well as the cultural stereotypes upon which they are rooted. By presenting these works, two images for each of the past forty years, Thomas incites the viewer to reflect on how advertising constructs and reinforces stereotypes about African American life, and how the public willingly accepts these images.

Hank Willis Thomas, "The Oft Forgotten Flower Children of Harlem", LightJet print, 34 by 27.5 in., (86.4 by 69.9 cm.), from Unbranded Series, 1969/2006; Courtesy of the Artist and Charles Guice Contemporary

In 1830, the population of the American bison was estimated to have been between 30 and 60 million. By 1889, North America's largest land animal, which had freely roamed the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, had been reduced to fewer than a 1,000 head. Largely hunted to extinction by white settlers for their hides, for their meat and, in particular, to destroy the food supply of Native Americans, bison today number fewer than 500,000. In her piece, Ghosts of the Land as well as in the Project Space, N. Dash reweaves the American bison into the fabric of the United States. Working from small pieces of cotton that she abrades by rolling them between her thumb and fingers, the "bison" that make up the stars and stripes of Dash's American flag are miniature sculptures. But the sculptures, less than intentional and more the result of a process both contemplative and meditative, also serve as hieroglyphs - symbols that represent a disconnect between a generation and its country, its politics, and the foundations of its society.

N Dash, "Ghosts of the Land", Lithograph, 31 by 56.25 in. (78.7 by 142.9 cm.) 2007; Courtesy of the Artist and Charles Guice Contemporary

Other works available:

Carrie Mae Weems received her B.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. from the University of California at San Diego, and studied folklore at the University of California, Berkeley with the late Alan Dundes. She has received the Visual Arts Grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship, and the Skowhegan Medal in Photography. Weems has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and has had solo and group shows at The High Museum of Art, The International Center for Photography, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Walker Art Center.

Hank Willis Thomas received his B.F.A. in Photography and Africana Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1998. A graduate from the California College of the Arts with an M.F.A. in Photography and an MA in Visual Criticism, Thomas' photographs have been published in numerous books, and will be featured in an upcoming monograph to be published by Aperture in Fall 2008. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, and is included in the permanent collections of the International Center for Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

N. Dash attended New York University where she earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and museums throughout the U.S., and is represented in both public and private collections including the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Craig Robbins Collection in Miami.