Thank you to the Brooklyn Rail and Ann C. Collins for this review of Oasa DuVerney’s current exhibition Into the Shining Dark on view at our 33 Herkimer Street location until June 19.
After reading Lucille Cilfton’s poem, the thirty eighth year, DuVerney felt compelled to create a body of work to foreground Black women who were once viewed as outlaws yet were vindicated while they were alive or posthumously. Through a series of graphite drawings and graphite works on hand cut paper, these women and their stories are brought to life again to remind us of the limiting binary of good and bad that these women had to navigate and the impact of self actualization through violence.
DuVerney’s work centers itself in social and political commentary that relates to her social status as a woman of color and a working-class person. She reimagines elements from both the natural and urban, political and social landscapes as active sites in building solidarity for Black liberation. In a world where some people and places have been deemed not worthy of protection, the figures in her works are rendered with the care, compassion and understanding that they deserve but aren’t always afforded.
