Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language

Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language considers the legacy and diasporic impact of the visual artist Emory Douglas. As the Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party and the graphic artist of the Black Panther Party Newspaper, Emory Douglas’ vision of black radical politics as a set of aesthetic concerns graphs a grammar of global struggle. Douglas’ imagery of anti-black police brutality and economic/housing discrimination is interlaced with American Imperialist projects and anti-colonist struggles happening globally. The enhancement and saturation of vibrant colors, figurative refusal, kinship, and border crossing visions of justice are the dialectics of possibility. The immediacy of global terror is call to resistance by everyday folks, who are depicted as active icons in the project for liberation. Bold Visual Language locates these initial concerns of Douglas in a contemporary discourse amongst visual artists and current social movements.

This exhibition features historical Black Panther Party Newspaper’s from Southern California Library, posters of remixed images by Emory Douglas, and works by Sadie Barnette, Juan Capistrán, Patrick Martinez, and embroideries of Zapantera Negra a project by the Woman’s Zapatista Embroidery Collective in collaboration with Douglas, organized by EDELO (En Donde Era La Onu) [Where the United Nations Used to Be] and artists Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow in Chiapas, México.

LACE’s summer storefront is dedicated to exhibitions that address deep historical, social, and political research of artistic practices. Focusing on practices that urgently call to be revisited and framed in a contemporary art moment, the storefront allows LACE to integrate significant social movements into the canon of contemporary art history. Summer 2017’s storefront exhibition El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975) initiated this curatorial focus, highlighting social art projects that define the history of Los Angeles and California, and reviving local community and personal archives. These exhibitions also create a space to host cross-generational conversations among contemporary artists.