“Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary”
Work by Janice Bond, organized by La Keisha Leek
August 4 – September 9, 2017

Filter Photo is pleased to announce Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary, a solo exhibition of work by Janice Bond, organized by La Keisha Leek, at Filter Space gallery.

Launched in 2016, Beyond the Binary is an ongoing photography-based multimedia series and social practice created by Janice Bond. The work examines the kinship between the self-identified woman’s body and nature. A complex structure in nature is often met with wonder, reverence, and desire. A woman labeled as complex is often perceived as confusing, a liability, or worse, a threat. From anatomy to love, pleasure to personal safety, history repeatedly exposes the lens of age, race, class, respectability, politics, and gender’s influence on societal norms. Bond believes it is imperative for women, particularly women of color to take the lead in documenting each other across mediums and platforms. By both providing sanctuary and reflection, this “work in progress” is an intergenerational and intercultural sisterhood, a new form of cultural mapping built on the trust, liberation, and love of women around the world.

La Keisha Leek organized this exhibition for Filter Space gallery where Bond presents a meditation on woman as giving tree, caretaker, and human. Through photo-based installations, Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary delves deeper into memory, familial relationships, humor, healing, love, and self-reflection. Each story curve, laugh line, every coil, and scar, is a part of both the anatomical and socio economic landscape we navigate daily whether we are aware of it or not. The same ties that in many instances have pulled women apart, bound and kept them silent, can also strengthen.

http://www.filterfestival.com/portfolio/be-careful-with-mother-notes-from-beyond-the-binary/

About the Artist:

Janice Bond is a curator, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural producer. Her forward thinking and high-energy approach have been utilized in a myriad of initiatives and productions across the globe. As a visual/multimedia artist, her photography, minimalist paintings, installations, and soundscapes are inspired by the terrain of human perspective and identity, sacred geometry, sound frequencies, and indigenous fractal patterns found in urban landscapes. In 2016, Janice participated in the first International Photography Symposium in Daugavpils, Latvia hosted by the Mark Rothko Art Center. Original works from her series, Beyond the Binary were added to their permanent collection.

About the Curator:

La Keisha Leek is an exhibition maker, project manager, and writer based in Brooklyn. Select exhibitions include: The Petty Biennial, co-curated with Sadie Woods (2017); Yelling At the Sky, Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation (2016); Closer Still, Chicago Artists Coalition (2015); Another Plan, Terrain Exhibitions (2015); How to Make A Hood, the Arts Incubator in Washington Park (2014). She was a Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Projects Curatorial Resident (2014-2015); Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation Curatorial Fellow (2016); participant of Independent Curators International’s Curatorial Intensive in Dakar, Senegal (2016); and 2017 Arts + Public Life Inaugural Curatorial Collective Resident with Sadie Woods (2016-2017). She has worked on special project teams for Navy Pier’s Arts and Discovery Plan, and Our Miss Brooks 100, a multidisciplinary centennial project celebrating the life of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. From 2012-2015, she was the Executive Administrator and Special Projects Manager to Theaster Gates where she provided day-to-day administration to the artist, in addition to coordinating artist-led programs, collection-based and community engagement residencies, conferences and high-level special events. She has also worked on artist projects and held positions with Maria Gaspar, Fo Wilson, Open Engagement, Architecture for Humanity, and Mana Contemporary. She has contributed writings for Edra Soto, and Prospect.4 catalogue’s on Ravine Neuenschwander. She received her BA in Art History from Columbia College Chicago. She is currently Manager for the Kenan Project at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Tags: Be Careful With Mother Notes from beyond the Binary, Chicago, Filter Photo, Janice Bond, La Keisha Leek, West Town