Tune in Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 1 – 2 p.m. (CDT) for a live digital artist talk with Sicangu Lakota performer, speaker and writer Frank Waln. This one-of-a-kind performance will connect us all to our past, present and future as Frank Waln explores connections of Indigenous history in the U.S. and issues currently affecting Native American communities and non-Native communities living on colonized Indigenous land. Rooted in the Lakota tradition of storytelling, Frank will share songs and stories about his upbringing and education on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and his experiences living in the South Side of Chicago.

The digital artist talk will be hosted on Zoom, a video communication platform. Register for Frank’s digital artist talk: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_cARYvR-mRKCNG-z6kUv6Pg

As an Indigenous music producer and audio engineer, Frank fuses traditional Lakota instruments with hip-hop and electronic music to create songs that shed light on Indigenous history and decolonization.

“I’m looking forward to sharing music and the stories of my ancestors, my community, my resistance and our history,” Frank said. “This online performance will not only educate and raise awareness, it will radically change the way people view themselves and the land they live on, Native and non-Native alike.”

Frank is a Gates Millennium Scholar and earned a bachelor’s degree in audio arts and acoustics from Columbia College Chicago. Frank’s work has been recognized with many industry awards. He has received three Native American Music Awards, the 2014 NCAIED Native American 40 Under 40 Award and the Columbia College Chicago’s 2014 Mayor’s Award for Civic Engagement. He has written for numerous publications, including: The Guardian, School Library Journal and Indian Country Today. Frank was a contributing author to “American Like Me,” a New York Times Best Seller by America Ferrera. He is currently working on a new Native flute album.

Find more of his work on Instagram and Twitter at handle @FrankWaln and on his website at frankwaln.com.

Travois is a Certified B Corporation focused exclusively on promoting affordable housing and economic development in Native communities. Since 2017, Travois has opened its Kansas City, Missouri, office to host Indigenous artists as part of the city’s art events. Our mission is to support and promote American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian artists. Our vision is to see Indigenous artists more prominently featured and powerfully supported in metropolitan Kansas City and beyond. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Travois has transitioned to hosting digital artist talks. The digital format provides an opportunity for audience participation outside of Kansas City.

For updates on future Travois art exhibition events and previous featured artists can be found at travois.com/news-events/art-exhibition-series.

“B.S.U.I.X.”

Black Student Union Inaugural Exhibition

Selected Works by:

Izsys Archer
Logan Crompton
Kevin Hopkins
Dante Moore
Abigail Oyesam
Kel Randle
Tajere Terry
Aleah Washington

September – October 2021

COVID-19 PROTOCOL: STARTING SEPTEMBER 10, 2021, ALL VISITORS WILL BE REQUIRED TO SHOW PROOF OF VACCINATION UPON ENTRY. 

2011 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO 64108
+1 – 844-202‑9303 | info@cerberagallery.com

EXHIBITION THESIS:

The Black Student Union Inaugural Exhibition will introduce the founding members of the collective by exploring the self-portrait. The work in the exhibition examines how identity is portrayed through anecdotes, visual vocabularies, and explorations of material. Viewers will be permitted to witness the artists’ experiences, not as spectators peering into their lives, but as listeners to their testimonies — — untethered from the white gaze.

Izsys Archer

The presence of the Black female body summons truth. The inherently intimate spaces our vessels inhabit sustain the weight of our most vulnerable inner thoughts, emotions and ways of being. I constantly engage in the act of image making through photography to wander on a journey of self possession and representation that emphasizes the fragile, tangible experience of Black womanhood, femininity, and matrilineal power. The perpetual use of self-portraiture becomes a performance of identity as I interrogate notions of domesticity, memory, and Black iconography.

Logan Crompton

Logan Crompton constructs narratives through painting, printmaking, and collage. Their work focuses on portraiture, patterns, and pop symbols to create these narratives. Crompton is currently pursuing their undergrad at the Kansas City Art Institute and is a double major in Painting and Art History. Their work formarly deconstructs elements of pop culture and iconography through its pairing with portraiture and text-based works. Through saturated colors, gestural mark-making, and digital collage Crompton’s work elicits a facade of happiness.

Kevin Hopkins

Kevin Hopkins is an artist born in Beaufort, South Carolina. However, because of his father’s service in the United States military, he lived in Texas and Germany for most of his childhood. After returning to South Carolina with his mother and siblings, Hopkins developed a passion for fine arts, which led to his acceptance into the Kansas City Art Institute. Double-majoring in Painting and Art History, Hopkins has focused his studies on contemporary art through painting, drawing, art history, and curation. Hopkins plans to pursue a career as an independent artist and curator and has begun working towards this goal by designing or curating for multiple Gullah Geechee people and institutions including, Harvard Gullah Professor Sunn m’Cheaux and The Beaufort Black Chamber of Commerce.

Dante Moore

Dante Moore is a research driven artist that combines digital artwork and installation processes to discuss ideas of cultural overlap and power structures. Moore utilizes digital programs and interfaces as spaces to make work based in communication, interacting with how ideas and information spreads. Memes, Digital Collages, Augmented Reality Filters, Screen Shots, prints on paper, social media, and installations are mediums Moore uses to produce his collections of work. Moore’s subject matter dives into layered and intersectional ideas of race and culture from a nihilistic and provocative stand point. Moore draws inspiration from art theory, meme culture, and the early 2000’s revival movement. As a mixed race artist, Moore’s work reassesses and confronts his complicated proximity to whiteness, blackness, and indigenous culture.

Abigail Oyesam

“Creating art is a way for me to investigate my thoughts and experiences. I find painting and drawing to be reflective processes that allow me to transform introspective moments into visual art. Making portraits has been a consistent part of my art practice, I am drawn to the unique beauty that each person possesses. Portraits are more than just an image, everybody has their own aura or story that I like to convey through my work. Lately, I’ve been interested in the way aspects of black cultures such as fashion and music are appropriated into the mainstream.”

Kel Randle

Kel Randle is an image maker based in Kansas City. He utilizes his camera to further understand the complexities that formed him which tend to draw him into documenting black and brown societies as well as exploring outside of the familiar by also creating images from the stories of others. His process involving developing his own negatives and making silver gelatin prints by hand.

Tajere Terry

Confidence, self-love, freedom of expression, spirituality and meditativeness from the broad culture of Black Hair. 
Our Crown
Our DNA
Our Creative Practice to Protect our Tight Curls
Our Nurturing Way of ‘Catching Up’ with our Loved Ones

Dreadlocks & Faux locs
Box Braids & Micro’s
Wigs, Sew Ins, & Crochet 
Cornrows & Pony Tails
Low Cuts
Box Cuts
And small to large Afro’s
The historic hair versatility passed down from generations.

These four images represent four different years of my life.
Four different hairstyles for four different moments of learning more about myself.
Each year progressively and unapologetically expressing my personality through hair textures, colors, and style

Aleah Washington

About the work: Keen with identity, Good Saturday presents a moment of leisure. This vibrant division of color bridges parts creating inclusion. I represent my vulnerability with family photos symbolizing a decaying memory as these young guys grow up. Neighborhoods and local businesses have a history before gentrification erases what once was there into a congested city. Five guys still find time to take a dip in the pool before their proximity changes with each season.

Please join Cerbera Gallery in celebrating “B.S.U.I.X.”: September – October 2021

A Kansas City native, John Marak uses his background in painting, ceramics and graphic design to create aesthetic objects that look unearthed and already in the middle of processes of change. He is inspired by how nature over time transforms surfaces, colors, and forms.

In Marak‘s newest work, he continues to use materials, textures and forms drawn from the urban landscape, combining these with ethereal colors.

“Through a process of exploration and experimentation, I continue to discover new possibilities in raw industrial materials in the creation of my process-based abstract work. I use metal, plaster, cement and industrial glue in my sculptural paintings. I’m inspired by how nature over time transforms surfaces, colors and forms, creating a sense of history and the passing of time. My aesthetic is influenced by Wabi-sabi, a Japanese world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. Wabi connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness. it can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear. – Marak

Torn Label and our neighbors Studios Inc are proud to host Kansas City’s biggest pop-up market event of summer 2021 — Heatwave. From 10 – 6 this Saturday AND Sunday our lots will be filled with artisan, vintage, homemade, and art vendors. Our kitchen has devised two food specials for the weekend, and both the Public House and our Taproom will be open. DJ Jabberock will be spinning Saturday afternoon as well! Heatwave at Torn Label is the place to be this weekend.