Art Design

Hot Dogs, Rats, and Birkin Bags: Paa Joe’s Wooden Coffins Are an Ode to NYC’s Ubiquitous Sights

New Yorkers are known for their unwavering devotion to the city, but would they want to spend eternity inside one of its once-ubiquitous taxis or worse yet, in the body of a wildly resilient subway rat?

In Celestial City at Superhouse, Ghanaian artist Paa Joe presents a sculptural ode to the Big Apple by carving an oversized rendition of the fruit, a Heinz ketchup bottle, a bagel with schmear, and more urban icons. Invoking the charms of all five boroughs, the painted wooden works open up to reveal the soft, padded insides of coffins, and two—the car and condiment—are even fit for humans.

 

Since 1960, Paa Joe has been crafting caskets, which are known as abeduu adeka or proverb boxes to the Ga people, a community to which the artist belongs. Coffins are a crucial component to the safe passage of the dead to the afterlife and a family tradition for Paa Joe. A statement says:

In the early 1950s, Paa Joe’s uncle, Kane Kwei pioneered the first figurative coffin, a cocoa pod intended for a chief as a ceremonial palanquin. When the chief passed away during its construction, it was repurposed as his coffin. This innovative art form quickly gained popularity, and Kane Kwei began creating bespoke commissions resembling living and inanimate objects, symbolizing the deceased individual’s identity (an onion for a farmer, an eagle for a community leader, a sardine for a fisherman, etc.).

He continues this legacy today with his Fantasy Coffins series. In addition to the New York tributes, his works include a Campbell’s soup can, an Air Jordan sneaker, fish, and fruit. The sculptures often exaggerate scale, including the diminutive Statue of Liberty and a gigantic hot dog that shift perspectives on the quotidian.

Celestial City is on view through April 27. For a glimpse into Paa Joe’s carving process, visit Instagram.

 

Art

Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Reimagined Historical Portraits of Women Scrutinize the Nature of Concealment

From elaborate hairstyles to hypertrophied mushrooms, an array of unexpected face coverings feature in Ewa Juszkiewicz’s portraits. Drawing on genteel likenesses of women primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries, the artist superimposes fabric, bouquets of fruit, foliage, and more, over the women’s faces.

In a collateral event during the 60th Annual Venice Biennale, presented by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Almine Rech, Juszkiewicz presents a suite of works made between 2019 and 2024 that encapsulate her precise reconception of a popular Western genre. Locks with Leaves and Swelling Buds showcases her elaborate, technically accomplished pieces using traditional oil painting and varnishing techniques.

Juszkiewicz’s anonymous subjects are reminders of the systemic omission of women from the histories of art and the past more broadly. Literally in the face of portraits meant to memorialize and celebrate individuals, the artist erases their identities entirely, alluding only to the original artists’ names in the titles. In a seemingly contradictory approach, by drawing our attention to this erasure, Juszkiewicz stokes our curiosity about who they were.

“By covering the face of historical portraits, Juszkiewicz challenges the very essence of this genre: she destroys the portrait as such,” says curator Guillermo Solana. In a recent video, we get a peek inside the artist’s studio, where she describes how elements of another European painting tradition, the still life, proffers a rich well of symbolic objects to conceal each sitter’s face, from botanicals to ribbons to food.

Locks with Leaves and Swilling Buds continues in Venice at Palazzo Cavanis through September 1. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

 

Sponsor

Diverse Expressions: 5 Artwork Themes to Discover at The Other Art Fair Brooklyn This May

Get ready for an art event unlike any other. The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art returns to ZeroSpace in Brooklyn from May 16 to 19. With each new fair comes new experiences, and this edition is no different as it unveils a vibrant roster of fresh artwork, new talents, and unexpected delights.

This May installment promises an array of exciting features, including 120+ independent artists set to showcase their collections, the 10th edition of Mike Perry and Josh Cochran’s “Get Nude, Get Drawn” portrait experience, complimentary hand-crafted whisky cocktails (exclusively for those aged 21+) on Thursday’s Opening Night, and live performances on both Opening Night and the highly anticipated Friday Late soirée.

Ahead of the main event, we’re highlighting five categories of artists based on shared themes, offering a look at the diverse range of artistic practices at this year’s fair.

Still life

Bella Wattles fuses colorful objects, ceramics, and thrifted treasures into whimsical paintings that echo societal harmony and celebrate women and LGBTQ+ creators.

Still lifes by self-taught artist Dawn Beckles bridge the energies of London and the Caribbean. Her bold strokes celebrate the beauty of everyday moments, inviting viewers to reconnect with their own stories.

 

Celebrating Black Portraiture

Bryane Broadie, a graphic artist from Prince George’s County, Maryland, discovered his passion for art in elementary school. His digital and mixed media works reflect Black history and culture.

Inspired by childhood resourcefulness and Brooklyn’s cultural tapestry, Sean Qualls crafts evocative illustrations and paintings. His work investigates identity, history, the human spirit, and universal human experiences.

 

Embossed and Embroidered

Guided by pure geometries, Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist Carrie Lipscomb explores space and texture, urging viewers to engage with the subtleties in found materials.

Sophie Reid is a visual storyteller who blends geometric shapes across multimedia. She honed her craft as a graphic designer and in her art, she uses illustrations and stitch works to echo her love for design and travel.

 

New Mediums

Mounts in colored acrylic boxes: NYC-based Venezuelan-born photographer Isabella Bejarano champions environmental causes through her sustainable fine art prints, donating proceeds to combat climate change.

Film lightboxes: Montreal-based artist and film aficionado Hugo Cantin creates patterned collages on vintage film stock. Housed in light boxes, his illuminated creations fuse sophisticated design with historical narratives.

 

Text

Toronto artist Patrick Skals escaped the corporate world in 2019 to pursue his unique vision. His collection, In Other Words, aims to disrupt norms with abstract commentary, challenging viewers to be introspective.

Kelli Kikcio, an artist from Toronto now based in Brooklyn, takes a hands-on approach in her work, which reflects her commitment to social justice and community engagement.

See work by all these artists and more at The Other Art Fair’s Brooklyn edition, on view from May 16 to 19.

Grab your tickets for an unforgettable weekend at theotherartfair.com.

Photography

Street Photographer Tony Van Le Captures Beauty in Brevity

As John Koening writes in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the term sonder refers to “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—an epic story that continues invisibly around you.” This profound feeling reveals itself in Tony Van Le’s street photography, circling around the meaningful coincidences that he captures instantaneously.

Le is fueled by serendipity and strangeness. Having originally explored these grounds through music production, the artist has since moved toward manifesting a similar ethos through photography. Impassioned by the transient work of Vivian Maier, Le has spent years cultivating this calling, becoming more confident with focusing his lens on strangers over time. Purely candid and wondrously ephemeral, the artist approaches each street scene with a clear mind.

He explains, “When I’m out on the street, my mindset combines looking for the out-of-the-ordinary with trying to be a blank slate. By being fully attuned to the moment, I’m more open to the photographic potential of what I encounter.” Although fleeting, each snapshot is a reminder of the wonder that comes from being fully present and deeply sensitive toward life’s mundane charm.

Le has a number of ongoing projects, which you can find on his website. He will also be exhibiting at Gallery-O-Rama in July, so follow along on Instagram for updates.

 

Art Science

Tali Weinberg Entwines Human and Ecological Health with Climate Data Sculptures

Anyone who’s tried to untangle a ball of yarn understands that fibers have a habit of knotting in ways that can seem impossible to unwind. These twisting, interlaced qualities ground much of Tali Weinberg’s fiber-based work as she pulls at the individual threads of our changing climate, using abstract weavings and textile sculptures to explore the inextricable nature of the crisis and the necessity for human intervention.

The Illinois-based artist begins with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that she translates into visual works using organic and synthetic materials. “These weavings and coiled sculptures are not data visualizations,” Weinberg notes. “Rather, I use the data as a scaffold, choosing materials, patterns, and colors to evoke places and add the social-political dimensions of the climate crisis back into the story the data tells.”

 

“Heat Waves/Water Falls,” for example, wraps naturally dyed cotton threads around plastic medical tubing, which dangles from a horizontal pole. Made during 2023, the hottest year on record, the sculpture incorporates the annual average temperatures for 18 major river basins in the continental U.S., data that corresponds to the thread colors. It also tethers environmental health to that of people. The artist elaborates:

As the pollution from human life on land runs downstream, watersheds become one window into the interdependence of ecological and human health. While the plastic medical tubing is an expression of the buildup of toxic plastics in our bodies and waterways, wrapping and bundling these tubes by hand becomes an expression of care for our interconnected lives.

“Heat Waves/Water Falls” is one of about 30 works on view at Denver Botanic Gardens for Weinberg’s solo show, The Space Between Threads. The exhibition focuses on the ongoing Climate Datascapes series, which she began in 2015 to better understand the climate crisis and to add an emotional, embodied tenor to sterile, even abstract science. Today, Weinberg considers the series a way of “seeking out and re-weaving otherwise obscured relationships—relationships between climate change, water, extractive industry, illness, and displacement; between disparate places; between personal and communal loss; between corporeal and ecological bodies; and between art, science, and social change.”

If you’re in Denver, you can see The Space Between Threads through June 9. Find more from Weinberg on Instagram. You might also enjoy The Tempestry Project.

 

Art Social Issues

In Venice, Jeffrey Gibson Envelops the U.S. Pavilion in Kaleidoscopic Color and Flawed Promises

Written in blocky, bright typography, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” wraps the top of the neoclassical facade of the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The opening lines from the Declaration of Independence greet visitors to the groundbreaking exhibition the space in which to place me by artist Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to represent the U.S. with a solo exhibition.

A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Cherokee descent, Gibson has established a distinct visual language that incorporates psychedelic color palettes, text, graphic forms, and various materials with references to Indigenous life, queer culture, literature, music, and more.

In Venice, the artist invokes Layli Long Soldier’s “Ȟe Sápa, One,” a poem with a distinct geometric shape not unlike the ones he creates visually. As curator Kathleen Ash-Milby says, the work “extends the timeline of Indigenous histories. Jeffrey combines ancient aesthetic and material modalities with early 19th- and 20th-century Native practices to propose an Indigenous future of our own determination.”

 

In Gibson’s practice and this project, language plays a critical role. Additional phrases appear throughout the exhibition, including on the bodies of two new monumental figures dressed in beads, fringe, and tin jingles. Titled “The Enforcer” and “WE WANT TO BE FREE,” the sculptures loom large and include lines from Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments along with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924,  a long-overdue law granting basic rights to Indigenous people.

In another gallery are Gibson’s beaded birds, which draw on the Indigenous craft tradition of whimsies. A recurring interest for the artist, the objects “fell into a category of being kitsch novelty because they weren’t seen as being Native enough or Victorian enough for the times they were being made in,” he said. Beaded motifs also appear on a punching bag and a new trio of busts with long hair cloaking the faces, the latter of which is “intentionally indeterminate” in culture and aesthetics.

 

Large-scale murals and paintings line the walls of each gallery, enveloping the sculptures and viewers in electrifying patchwork. As detailed in a lengthy profile in The New York Times, color plays a crucial role for the artist and his links to Native and queer traditions. “We’ve been dismissed as garish and too much because of our use of color,” he said. Instead, he uses such kaleidoscopic compositions to shift the perspective and offer a different view of past and present. With the pavilion, he “wanted to map out some moments in American history when there is this real promise of equality, liberty, and justice and then think about what those terms mean.”

the space in which to place me will be on view in Venice from April 20 to November 24. It’s worth picking up a copy of An Indigenous Present, Gibson’s critically acclaimed survey of Native North American art, to learn more about his thinking and work.