The familial visions of seven artists find a temporary home in Tampa this fall when the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum hosts A Family Affair. The artists explore how individual identities are shaped by domestic dynamics, ancestral lore, cultural traditions, inherited socio-economic status and gender roles, and the genetic intermingling of ethnic, racial, physical and internal traits.
Many works are the product of inter-generational collaboration. In their Progeny series, Deborah Willis, an acclaimed photographer and scholar of African-American portraiture, merges visages with her son Hank Willis Thomas, also a renowned artist. LaToya Ruby Frazier faces her mother and grandmother against the unadorned setbacks of the post-industrial Rust Belt. Jamaican-American Renee Cox casts members of her blended clan in staged scenarios that upend racial stereotypes. Jacolby Satterwhite animates his schizophrenic mother’s sketches for unrealized inventions into 3D constellations that orbit his alter ego, a live action figure clipped from performances he choreographs in NYC. Kalup Linzy also directs his own diva persona in melodramatic art films and an online soap opera in which the Central Florida native and USF alumnus stars as the matriarch and some of her fictional descendants. In addition, videos by Linzy, Satterwhite and Frazier loop in the museum’s galleries throughout the show’s run Aug. 28 to Dec. 12, and the 2014 documentary Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (co-produced by Willis) screens on campus Sept. 17.
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