New City Arts presents Diaspograms: The Symbology of Black Life, a solo exhibition by Kweisi Morris at Welcome Gallery featuring work he created during the New City Arts Fellowship.
Artwork image courtesy of the artist
New City Arts' Welcome Gallery
114 3rd St. NE, Charlottesville, VA 22902
First Fridays
April 1, 5:00–7:30 PM
Free and open to the public. All ages welcome.
Gallery Hours
April 2, 10:00 AM–2:00 PM
Covid-19 Visitor Policy
Masks are required at all times for all visitors, regardless of vaccination status. Please do not come to Welcome Gallery if you have been exposed to COVID-19, are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, or have been advised to isolate or quarantine.
Sponsors
This program is supported by an Enriching Communities grant from the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation and Maurice Wallace and Pam Sutton-Wallace.
Exhibition Statement (courtesy of the artist)
From twisted braids and church hats to homecoming and Juneteenth, these are the images and ideas of the shared experience of Black Americans connected across generations through our cultural DNA. Collectively, they are a celebration of a people. When Black life is seen and valued in all its trauma and triumph, it can direct the moral trajectory of a community. The visual expression of our experience, full of meaning and power, is the symbology of Black life.
Graphical symbols can transcend language barriers and carry the weight of deep meaning, like the iconic Black Power fist. Now imagine a collection of such symbols representing the depth and breadth of Black life in America.
Diaspograms: The Symbology of Black Life, is a celebration of the Black experience distilled as imagery. And while racial equity is still a long time comin’, in the meantime, these Diaspograms are our Black-American Adinkra.
Photo Credit: Jess Walters
About the Artist (courtesy of the artist)
Kweisi Morris (he/him) has been creating for most of his life. Action figures fashioned from strips of torn paper when he was a kid. DIY model cars and planes cobbled and glued from scraps of old cardboard. Stories drawn from somewhere deep in his imagination.
Kweisi did all the usual things in college: fibers and dyes, basket making, watercolor, oils and acrylics, chalk, pastels, charcoal and pencil, ceramics, mixed media, found objects, and woodwork. Post-college, he worked as a graphic designer, medical illustrator, software developer and designer. Before arriving in his current incarnation as a visual artist, Kweisi did some acting in Scottsville and Charlottesville, on the stage, in the street, and for a time, in a digital series online.
He found his muse on a warm Saturday morning in Accra, at an artist’s market so alive with creative energy that he could feel the hum of that force in his bones. For the first time, Kweisi's own creative voice made sense to him. He realized then that he had spent a lifetime creating art, and never realized that in the process, he was creating an artist.
Kweisi is the Sutton-Wallace Family Fellow at New City Arts (March 2022).
Headshot courtesy of the artist.
Photos by Derrick J. Waller.
