Past Exhibitions:
Courtesy of Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery
North Star : Healing Generations
February 9 - March 11, 2023
MISSION STATEMENT FROM THE NORTH STAR CREATIVE DIRECTOR PATRISSE CULLORS
The North Star brand is the latest collaborative endeavor born from the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery, Patrisse Cullors, Project Director of North Star, and Rita Nazareno, Creative Director of ZACARIAS 1925. The hand-woven line focuses on the movement to free Black women from incarceration. Black women are currently the fastest-growing population being incarcerated. Black women make up 13% of the country’s population but disproportionately represent 44% of women in jail, and 30% of the women’s prison population. Opposed to incarcerated Black men, Black women entering the prison system are frequently left unsupported and isolated. The new line, featuring a poem from previously incarcerated Black literary Nissi Berry, aims to support women in a way the system has not. Profits from each bag sold go directly to the movement to end the incarceration of Black women and put money back into the pockets of previously incarcerated Black female artists. This design of The North Star bag line is inspired by quilts made by enslaved Africans that were crafted to help lead them to freedom while navigating the Underground Railroad. According to “quilt code theory”, designs such as "wagon wheel," "tumbling blocks," and "bear's paw" were secret messages hidden in quilt patterns that helped direct enslaved Africans to freedom.
The official launch of this new carefully crafted bag line with intention will officially launch on February 9th, 2023, in time for the art-savvy Frieze LA crowd and local art community sold exclusively at the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery. There will be a limited capsule of 40 bags for sale with four design SKUs.
Crenshaw Dairy Mart : OPEN STUDIO
The Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery is thrilled to announce OPEN STUDIO, a series of ongoing intimate presentations of international artists’ works from the diaspora - Africa in particular - and their dialogue with local Inglewood and South Central-based artists. CDM strives to share the stories, the artists, and the artists’ presence from the continent, across Western Africa and Eastern Africa. The first two artists CDM will share presentations of works by are specifically from Rwanda.
The conversations between these artists look to Rwanda’s history of healing and a recurring narrative of resilience and repair. Most importantly, the first two artists of this series have been part of a legacy of community builders, organizers, and healers through their works in the arts in their respective communities in Rwanda. These artists are part of a large cohort of Rwandan artists at the forefront of an arts renaissance that is currently shifting conversations across the continent, and in turn the arts globally.
CDM’s ongoing work as a collective, organization, and gallery is deeply tied to this dialogue from the diaspora, in the centering of healing, care, and resilience. By centering abolition in our own work, we continue to center the artwork of artists, internationally and locally, at the frontlines of repair, healing, and care in their respective communities.
Cedric Mizero is a Rwandan artist and filmmaker whose work is characterized by his investigation of personal and collective memories, design, and aesthetics. The Crenshaw Dairy Mart is pleased to present an intimate selection of works from the series, Protection, for OPEN STUDIO. The series, Protection, is part of a large body of mixed media artworks Mizero has been developing since 2017.
The works from the series navigate much of the artist’s personal and collective memories anchored in the artist and Rwanda’s relationship to the church. Throughout the series, Mizero utilizes textile in relationship to bodies that become armored through religious iconography such as rosaries and medallions, citing the two as his primary medium in the series. Mizero’s artworks and projects are largely mobilized through community collaborations and conversations with upwards of 100 women artisans and craftworkers in his hometown of Kigali, as well as across Rwanda. These collaborations are a large part of Mizero’s discourse in creating work which is centered in the healing of collective memory in community, as well as building resilience through community efforts. For Mizero’s work, this resilience and healing is created over time and is in conversation with a history of indigenous practices which have centered collective fiber work as a practice towards collective healing. This is largely prevalent in the collective, intricate beading, weaving, embroidery, and embellishments in his sculptures and mixed-media works developed across conversations with his communities.
As part of Cedric Mizero : OPEN STUDIO, the artist presents an intimate screening of Protection (2021), a short film developed by the artist as part of the residency, Aby Concept.* Cedric Mizero is the director of Umutima / The Heart (Rwanda, 2022), Dreaming My Memory (Rwanda, 2019), and New Life in the Village (Rwanda, 2019). He is the production designer, costume designer and provided artistic direction to Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost (Rwanda / USA, 2021). Cedric Mizero’s work has previously been exhibited at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), 180 Strand (London, UK), and Kigali Fashion Week (Kigali, Rwanda) and is currently on view at the Frick Art Museum (Pittsburgh, USA) in collaboration with FashionAFRICANA.
Cedric Mizero : OPEN STUDIO was on view from Monday, September 12 through Friday, October 7, 2022.
*Spiritual Armor: An Interview between Cedric Mizero and Kami Gahiga