Black Futures in Art
Black Futures in Art: The Space Between Us
Dairy Arts Center
2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302
January 17–March 30, 2025
Admission: free
Review by Dani Cunningham
The Dairy Arts Center’s exhibition Black Futures in Art: The Space Between Us reimagines rigid boundaries as permeable gray areas and proposes differences among people as opportunities for collaboration. Guest curated by Adderly Grant-Lord, who also has paintings in the show, this group of Black artists and allies suggest moving forward into our collectively uncertain future without forgetting what’s behind, using past experiences, including traumas, to build strong communities. Focusing on the energy that thrives in creative spaces, this exhibition reminds viewers to use this energy as a catalyst for inclusive relationships and comfort within liminality.
An installation view of the Black Futures in Art: The Space Between Us exhibition at Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
Despite its artistic intent, the exhibition is laid out disjointedly, with artworks split between four separate spaces: the McMahon Gallery, the Macmillan Family Lobby, the Polly Addison Gallery, and the Hand Rudy Corridor. Filling these spaces isn’t necessarily problematic, especially for an exhibition with so many artworks, but the artists exhibited in these areas are not marked as being part of one show. Instead, three of the four exhibition spaces focus on individual artists, resembling solo shows. Although the three artists—Yazmin Atmore, Marcus Murray, and Adri Norris—are certainly strong enough to carry solo exhibitions, this curatorial or perhaps institutional choice is confusing.
A view of Adri Norris’s paintings in the Macmillan Family Lobby at Dairy Arts Center. Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
Adri Norris’s Lil’ Kim trading card. Image by DARIA.
The reprieve from this ironically dissonant layout is that the art is energetic, inspired, and materially diverse. In the Macmillan Family Lobby, Norris’s homage to female rappers whittles down their essences into small, approachable portraits, painstakingly painted with articulate details. Representations of icons like Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim, and Da Brat are paired with digitally printed versions of their portraits made to look like trading cards.
An installation view of Yazmin Atmore’s installation in the Polly Addison Gallery at Dairy Arts Center. On the left: Beautiful Creatures, 2023, analog and digital collage, 4 × 6 feet Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
Meanwhile, Atmore gushes about flowers and futuristic nature-inspired designs through analog and digital collages paired with altar-like floral arrangements in the Polly Addison Gallery. On one side of the artist’s altars is an enlarged collage titled Beautiful Creatures that is formatted like her smaller collages. With its size and material, this artwork captures Atmore’s ability to blur the boundaries between mediums while also consistently challenging expectations around collage and scale.
An installation view of Marcus Murray’s work in the Hand Rudy Corridor at Dairy Arts Center. Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
Marcus Murray, Cook, from the Black History Year Round series, 2023, digital media on vinyl. Image by Liz Quan.
Similarly, Murray walks between worlds in the narrow Hand Rudy Corridor, mixing cartoon murals, wall-drawn, one-line designs and figures, and medium-sized paintings with cutout illustrations of a dozen or so influences, from a MF Doom mask to plantains to gold bars.
An installation view of the Black Futures in Art exhibition in the McMahon Gallery at Dairy Arts Center. Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
The majority of the artists fill the McMahon Gallery and reaffirm the range demonstrated by the artwork outside this space. Bringing together traditional techniques like stone carving and hyper-modern digital work, the artists have built a microcosm of the greater creative community, silently supporting each other with their shared vision.
Gedion Nyanhongo, Opal, carved stone. Image by DARIA.
Collen Nyanhongo, Earth Spirit, serpentine and springstone. Image by DARIA.
Sculptors and stone carvers Collen and Gedion Nyanhongo come from a long line of stone carvers based in Zimbabwe, demonstrating ancestral connection to the Earth as well as the significance of artistic communities. Both engage with modernist styles and abstraction, but incorporate materials like serpentine, opal, and verdite that are prevalent in Zimbabwe. Gedion’s Opal, depicting an adult and a baby owl, and Collen’s Earth Spirit, a black polished, abstractly featured head fixed to raw stone, are examples of this style.
Dr. Thomas Elias Lockhart, Way Too Fly, mixed media, 36 x 36 inches. Image by Liz Quan.
Dr. Thomas Elias Lockhart III’s paintings mix three-dimensional objects and pigment, with the pigment sometimes even becoming three dimensional. In Way Too Fly, the artist depicts a masculine profile, accentuated by a golden halo, whose textured hair is composed of glossy, raised dots. A large, dark wing extends from behind the figure’s ear, adorning his hair while aligning him with the Icarus legend and suggesting he lives somewhere between earth and air. The wing motif doesn’t stop there, as the figure’s neck is subtly adorned with a gold chain and wing pendant that realistically extends from the flat canvas.
In the background, he is surrounded by etheric gold medallions and blue, swirling brushstrokes that seem as much a part of his world’s atmosphere as the wing does his head. Toying with archetypes as much as he experiments with materials, Lockhart builds a narrative in which comfort and beauty exists in borderlands.
Kevin Johnson, Unexpected Guest, 2023, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches. Image by Liz Quan.
Kevin Johnson explores these concepts too, positioning dreamy figures in ethereal landscapes that hint at in-between spaces. The comfortably seated male subject in Unexpected Guest wears a grey hoodie and his skin and parts of his clothing are adorned with seemingly magical, curling symbols. His face is serene, and he stares ahead, focused intently but also looking as though he is absorbing his environment rather than perceiving anything specific. That he is seated on a cloud only adds to this painting’s mystical elements. Hovering near him, a butterfly offers connection, as it symbolizes transformation and the realm between life and death in many cultures. [1]
Adderly Grant-Lord, Starting Again, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. Image by Liz Quan.
Adderly Grant-Lord, Untouchable Place Within, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. Image by DARIA.
Curator Adderly Grant-Lord’s self-described “abstract-surrealist creations” magnify the energetic vein that runs through this exhibition. [2] From the primary-colored portal in Starting Again to the nebula of converging magenta, orange, and yellow in Untouchable Place Within, it is clear the artist reveres color and pours that essence into her work.
Though most of her work is pure abstraction, Starting Again centralizes a cluster of tiny, nondescript figures, who walk into a tunnel-like aperture of sorts and blur as they recede into space. Like the butterfly in Johnson’s Unexpected Guest, Grant-Lord evokes the in-between, depicting a peaceful portal that carries her painting’s subjects into the unknown. Meaningfully, the artist doesn’t depict the other side, only the path between here and there, signifying that the viewer isn’t expected to understand what happens next. It seems likely the artist herself doesn’t know.
An installation view of the Black Futures in Art exhibition at Dairy Arts Center. Image courtesy of Dairy Arts Center.
In fact, Grant-Lord’s paintings and this exhibition suggest that expectations may be the problem, that connection is born from sitting in the gaps with curiosity rather than answers. Black Futures in Art: The Space Between Us invites viewers to embrace ambiguity, to see the beauty in transition, and to consider how art can guide us through the complexities of change. Ultimately, it urges us to find community not in spite of uncertainty or difference, but because of it.
Dani/elle Cunningham (she/her) is an artist, scholar, and independent curator. She writes about science fiction, gender, sexuality, and disability, with an emphasis on mental illness. The co-founder of chant cooperative, an artist co-op, she holds a master’s degree in art history and museum studies from the University of Denver.
[1] Tia Merotto, “Winged Messengers: How Monarch Butterflies Connect Culture and Conservation in Mexico,” Folklife Magazine, October 31, 2022, Smithsonian Institute for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, folklife.si.edu/magazine/monarch-butterflies-mexico-culture-conservation.
[2] From the Exhibition Guide.
