The Lens

Baseera Khan shifts seamlessly between media to explore the interconnectedness of capital, politics, and the body. Their work in video, photography, sculpture, and performance creates spaces of reprieve, beauty, and safety, while also critiquing power structures and knowledge systems that systematically exclude or misrepresent marginalized populations. For their first solo exhibition in the Midwest, Khan brings together new and recent collages, sculptures, and video, alongside a major new commission that responds to architectural signifiers of power. Monumental in scale, Painful Arc (Shoulder-High) (2022), features a classical Islamic arch clad with custom pictographic paneling inscribed with loaded cultural... Continue reading Baseera Khan: Weight on History

The Perspectives is a photo-based, mixed-media mural celebrating Black iconography, culture, expression, and joy. Produced in partnership by Mz. Icar, an anonymous, interdisciplinary art collective, and ArtWorks, this public artwork is informed by the collection of oral histories and archival photographic records from residents of Walnut Hills, a Cincinnati neighborhood with an incredibly rich Black history. The creation process includes neighborhood engagement and the employment of four local Youth Apprentices under the mentorship of both Mz. Icar and an ArtWorks Teaching Artist. This highly collaborative mural is a powerful record of Black voices and histories, past and present.... Continue reading Perspectives

All houses, once lived in, have stories. Some are mere whispers, others scream. A home’s visual history interprets the movements of its residents, through time. Like us, houses breathe and have lives. In Mature, the images of the Stair House capture the passage of time before the transformation into a new chapter arrives. This new chapter is coupled with the passing of Marie Ward (1927–2020), who lived in the house for the past 50 years, and speaks to the Appalachian-migration experience of Cincinnati in the mid-20th century. A video interview with Ward speaks to the experience of living... Continue reading Mature

Unusual Character: Portraits and the Modern Eye shares the work of five modern photographers whose portraits are atypical, uncomfortable, yet inexplicably attractive. They make us pause and ask questions. The process, medium, and presentation used by the artists in this exhibition add to the mystery. The wet-plate tintypes of Craig Barber harken to an earlier age and the 3D animations of Claudia Kunin cause the subjects to move among us. Sunjoo Lee’s paper covered models are robotic and abstract at the same time. Sandra Klein’s self-portrait composites puzzle, surprise, and inform us, while Matt Zory’s street photography reveals a harsher... Continue reading Unusual Characters: Portraits and the Modern Eye

The exhibition It Is What lt Is (Subject to Change) consists of five artists who explore the mutability of video, with approaches ranging from the documentary to the poetic. Diana Duncan Holmes uses a low res, almost primitive video to document a Shaker Village and at the same time answer questions about favorites in life (animals, authors, etc.). Russel Johnson documents the process of turning the sap of maple trees into syrup, boiling something down to its essence. Mark Patsfall inserts myriad video records into static paintings, changing the meanings of both. Charles Woodman collaborates with... Continue reading It Is What It Is (Subject to Change)