Engage with the artwork of Shirley Parker-Benjamin and Onaje Benjamin and join them in exploring our own imaginations to envision and express resistance to erasure.
Each of us has a story to tell, from our own unique view and experiences. But in our culture, some narratives are actively elevated while others are erased. Visual artists Shirley Parker-Benjamin and Onaje Benjamin have been resisting that erasure, liberating their imagination about whose stories matter and asking us to do the same. Their creative work and lived experiences have led both to be highly attuned to legacies of oppression, how they manifest in injustices today, and what a more just world would look like.
Shirley Parker-Benjamin’s mixed media, sculpture, and textile works draw inspiration from the traditions of her African ancestry and bring our attention to lack of representation in both process (Black women’s creative expression) and outcome (images of Black beauty).
Onaje Benjamin’s photographs help us see how resources accumulate and are distributed, highlight visual clues of inequality, and celebrate urban communities in the Mahicantuck (Hudson) Valley
Exhibit on view at the GWI Greenhouse (65 St. James Street, Kingston) during weekday business hours and 1:00 – 5:00 pm on second Saturdays (June 11, July 9, August 13, September 10, October 8).
Registration is only required for the workshops and receptions listed below.
To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.
– bell hooks
EVENTS + WORKSHOPS / Resisting Erasure
We invite you to engage with the artwork and each other by joining us for events, workshops, and receptions throughout the exhibit, on second Saturdays of the month.
About the Artists
Shirley Parker-Benjamin is an interdisciplinary artist creating across the genres of sculptural mixed media, assemblage and installation. Her work has been exhibited regionally and internationally. In her work, she explores the intersection between ancestral, spiritual, metaphysical, African/African diasporic traditions and the feminine. Her materials include found objects, natural materials, metal, minerals and beadwork to convey her ideas. Shirley Parker-Benjamin is a high priestess emeritus in the Ministry of Maat. Her studio, Ezili Arts is located in the Cunneen Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Onaje Benjamin’s photography reflects a passion for social justice and activism. His images capture urban settings and the cultural and artistic tensions which evolve in these rapidly changing environments. The work ranges from images of street taggers and murals, to portraits of street people and the structural and architectural evolution which symbolizes gentrification and the uprooting of disenfranchised communities.
Our Partners and Sponsors
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.
We also want to acknowledge the following sponsors for their support!
Upstate Films, Bailey Pottery, Blue-Byrd’s and the Hinds family.
