Monica Uszerowicz

4 days ago | hyperallergic.com | Natalie Haddad |Hakim Bishara |Lakshmi Rivera Amin |Monica Uszerowicz

Artist’s voices aren’t always easy to listen to. Sometimes it’s because they’re speaking to uncomfortable realities that shape our societies and lives. In other cases, the art may be part of that uncomfortable reality, reflecting rather than critiquing harmful perspectives. The solo exhibitions below all represent artists with strong individual visions and voices, some more problematic than enlightening, but all thought provoking.

2 weeks ago | hyperallergic.com | Natalie Haddad |John Yau |Taliesin Thomas |Monica Uszerowicz

At a moment when it’s crucial to connect the dots of history to see how we can change the future for the better, it’s heartening to know that artists are doing the work. Through linguistic systems and pop cultural references, Renée Green and Jim Shaw uncover the ways that United States history is manipulated to veil systemic and government abuses. Meanwhile, a show at Brooklyn’s Amant looks at the failings and potential of education in the US.

2 weeks ago | hyperallergic.com | Monica Uszerowicz

In Gordon Parks’s photograph “Radio Technicians’ Class, Daytona Beach, Florida” (1943), two rows of students gaze obediently at their professor, whose back is to the viewer. Headphones on and books open, the class is engaged, even enraptured. The work is part of a series of images Parks made while working as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration — later the Office of War Information — on the heels of a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Monica Uszerowicz

In Locked Down, a song by the San Diego-based poet and rapper, Chance, she sings with both foreboding and care: “Every day that you wake up you’re blessed / love every breath, ’cause you don’t know what’s next.” Chance wrote the song – originally a poem, its title a callback to Akon’s Locked Up – while imprisoned in Phoenix, Arizona, during the beginning of the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown (“six feet apart in a five-by-five,” she raps in the same song, alluding to the virtual...

2 months ago | dazeddigital.com | Monica Uszerowicz

20 Images The Arabic phrase “haraka baraka” – or “al haraka baraka” – translates to “movement is a blessing” or “in movement, there is blessing”. The poetic aphorism might refer to many movements and shifts: moving the body, moving across borders, keeping resources flowing. To even imagine movement is blessed; “If you move,” a dear friend told me, “you’ll be provided for.” And is there a movement more freeing, more graceful, than the sort which skateboarding necessitates?