New D.C. art exhibit featuring Black women artists centers healing, devotion and self-reflection

Press Release (ePRNews.com) - WASHINGTON - Aug 31, 2022 - Zawadi African Art Gallery and Boutique presents local, Black women artists in a new exhibit entitled, “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?,” curated by Adam Odomore. The show features a group of five distinct contemporary Black women artists from the Washington metropolitan area. Opening with a reception at Zawadi located at 1524 U Street N.W., on Friday, September 9, 2022, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., the exhibit closes on September 24, 2022. The exhibit includes painted canvases, wood and hair art, surface representations of safety, love, healing, intimacy, and embodiment of desire and self-actualization. Kibian Adams, Nicole Wandera, Candice NoelleRX, Elizabeth Miller, and Erica J. Clarke are the featured artists.

This marks the first exhibit between Zawadi and curator Adam Odomore, an artist and memory worker working as a Museum Assistant at The Phillips Collection Museum in Washington, D.C. He brings passion and a commitment to championing and supporting the artistic creativity of Black and women artists of the diaspora both locally and internationally, and with this exhibit, he aims to create, move, and offer insight as well as change.

“This exhibit serves as a tool for reclamation, reaffirmation, self-representation, and a homage to and of the self– a celebration. This is because self-love is the ultimate act of resistance,” stated Odomore.

Inspired by the poem of the same name by Dr. Margaret Burroughs, co-founder of the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, the exhibit allows the viewer to witness and experience healing through art and objects, eliciting an emotional response instead of objects purely for functionality and aesthetics.

Attendees are encouraged to rsvp (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/what-shall-i-tell-my-childre…).

About Zawadi African Art Gallery and Boutique

Zawadi opened on U St. in Washington, D. C. in 1992 and has grown and evolved along with the street, which is now a major attraction for diverse and well-traveled visitors. The owner, Irene T. Whalen, lived and worked in East, West, and Southern Africa, bringing Zawadi the continent’s knowledge and a strong commitment to small-scale entrepreneurs and the environment. Zawadi features contemporary and traditional African art focusing on home accessories. Textiles, home accessories, and art pieces change frequently and are often one of a kind. There is always something special to be found in Zawadi.

About the Curator:

Adam Odomore is an artist-archivist engaged in “preservation as a form of futurism,” and a researcher, writer, and curator — a memory worker of African and African American art, photography, and culture. His interests lie at the intersection of art as it relates to memory and representation (of the self and the communal), rest and sensuality, gender, and race. He uses collage as a painterly medium merging with paint, mixed media and photography, photomontage, charcoal and pastel, pencil and ink, and a signature of works incorporating African forms and images of Black people. Typically autobiographical in nature, his works depict a relatability on his personal journey as an artist and a Black being. Steadfastly contemporary, Adam regularly chooses to work with objects symbolically associated with gender and Blackness. Documenting the ordinary and the extraordinary— taking control of the narrative and amplifying Black voices, histories, legacies, dreams, and futures.