Allana Clarke: Visiting Artist Lecture

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | A Trinidadian-American artist, Clarke is celebrated for using materials such as sugar, cocoa butter and hair-bonding glue to construct works that confront histories of colonialism and Western standards of beauty. As she stretches, pushes, pulls and molds these materials, she frees them from their traumatic origins and offers a metaphor to free herself from the violent compartmentalizations of Black identity. Her exhibition "Allana Clarke: A Particular Fantasy”—her first institutional solo show—is a collaboration between Usdan Gallery and Art Omi, in Ghent, NY, with concurrent displays in both locations. Her Usdan installation focuses on ideas of process central to Clarke’s work, including five performance videos and a 25-foot-long hair-bonding glue sculpture produced inside the gallery; her making of this sculpture, her largest to date, is part of the exhibit.