Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times
Dark Matter:
Celestial Objects
as Messengers of Love
in These Troubled Times.
Folayemi wilson
This unique limited-edition catalogue documents the exhibition Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times, Folayemi Wilson’s solo exhibition presented at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) in Chicago Illinois, March 31 through July 14, 2019. The catalogue includes a booklet with exhibition photography and essays by Chelsea Mikael Frazier and HPAC curator Allison Peters Quinn, the original poem commissioned from writer and visual artist Krista Franklin, along with a 12” LP of her live, recorded performance in the gallery with musician and composer Ben LaMar Gay on July 11, 2019.
In this solo exhibition at Chicago's Hyde Park Art Center, slipcast objects as cosmic orbs, soundscapes, and NASA video create a dynamic environment as a celestial Afrofuturist landscape for reflection, meditation and healing. With a shotgun house-inspired sculpture as a spaceship that appears to have come from another realm, the work embodies my desire to infuse love and restore dignity to a culture that is troubled with unfortunate manifestations of fear, hate, greed, shame, and a disregard for others.
This exhibition of new work combines elements of architecture and integrates visual art, objects, sound, and video. As in some of the my previous work (Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities, 2016), the house as a powerful symbol, continues my interest in Southern vernacular architecture. In this case, the shotgun house with its origins in West Africa and economy in layout and design becomes a form that appears as if it landed from outer space incorporating elements that suggest a futuristic, transplanetary Middle Passage and migration through deep space. Original soundscapes by Joelle Mercedes placed throughout the gallery are conceived to sound like communications from another world.
