In the middle of winter, walking into the new exhibition at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Gallery feels a bit like dreaming. Outside, the world clamors between distressing and divisive headlines, while inside, the space is still and serene, with a collection of collages on the walls that each draw the viewer into their own singular universes.
Co-curated by MICA Exhibitions director Andrea Dixon and Baltimore Beat arts and culture editor Teri Henderson, LAYERS: The Art of Contemporary Collage is a celebration of this boundless artform. Featuring a diverse group of more than 30 artists, from emerging talents to art-world heavyweights, the works range from traditional cut-and-paste compositions to multi-dimensional mixed-media installations. Altogether, the collection showcases the medium’s magic and multitudes.
“Collage is a very democratic medium,” Henderson told us last fall, noting that the accessible artform—long minimized as “craft”—invites artists of all abilities, identities, and experiences. In essence, disparate or even discarded materials are brought together to create something new. A “liberatory” practice, as the co-curators call it, “there are no limits or mistakes.
The exhibition is on view in MICA’s Fox Building on Mount Royal Avenue through March 9. Admission is free and open to the public Monday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On February 19, catch a collage-themed panel at the school’s Brown Center at 6 p.m.
Prepare to be stopped in your tracks by Headdress 12 from D.C.’s Helina Metaferia. Contemplate Towards Gravity by Berlin’s Aline Helmcke. Confront history through Now In Color! by New York’s Isaiah Winters (a regular contributor to Baltimore). Consider the cosmos in If she had been a sleepwalker by Austin’s Xochi Solis.
While every work is worth a pause, below are six—each by an artist hailing from or based in Baltimore—that we recommend lingering with a little bit longer.
Calling Cards and Spirits at Eddie’s Place by SHAN Wallace
Though there are those larger and more colorful works throughout this exhibition, this largely black-and-white collage is one of the most magnetic in the bunch. Over the last decade, Wallace has become a vital artist on the local scene, her art speaking so potently to the nuances of Black life in her hometown city, and here, that deep-rooted regard is on full display.
Chock full of action, the positioning of these photographs draws viewers into the heart of the piece—an ode to the third spaces of Black Baltimore—in this instance, through the scenes of Eddie’s B’s Glass Door Lounge in Jonestown. Amidst the joyful dancing and drinks, there are moments of rest and one resolute stare. The playing cards almost fall off the canvas, and beneath them, the artist herself signs the dangling tab, which feels like a mic drop. As if to say: “Check, please!”
Joan Poncella by Bria Sterling-Wilson
Last summer, we named this Baltimore native as our “artist to watch.” Intimate and introspective, her collages create evocative windows into the inner worlds of Black women, including members of Sterling-Wilson’s own family. In this work—part of a recent series in homage to her grandmother, the piece’s namesake—the Creative Alliance artist-in-residence combines photographs and magazine clippings into a surreal and seductive scene straight out of the 1970s.
A woman sits comfortably on a retro chair, both all dressed up and ready to go, yet also waiting, her hair setting beneath a salon dryer. She exudes a quiet ferocity, her larger-than-life left hand looking as if, at any moment, it might lift right out of the frame. Be sure to stop and admire a similar coming-to-life effect in the adjacent Wifey Material.
La Cueva de la Sirena: San Carlos by Jackie Milad
On the east wall of the exhibition, this kaleidoscopic tapestry is a centerpiece that viewers could get lost in for hours. From a brass bar, it hangs with both light and might, with the 2019 Sondheim Artscape Prize finalist layering her hand-dyed canvas with paper, paint, and chiffon into a cacophony of texture and color.
A child of immigrants, Milad uses the artwork—part of a recent series, translated as Searching for the Siren—as a means to explore her mother’s Honduran roots, as well as her own mixed and migratory identity (her father hails from Egypt). Long, dark, faceless braids disappear into the canvas, like a mermaid sinking underwater, seemingly beckoning the artist—and you—to follow.
My mother is the greatest artist. My mother is your mother, too. I weep by Devin N. Morris
As soon as you enter the Decker Gallery, your eyes will be drawn down the lengthy room until they land on a seven-foot-tall installation by Morris, a Baltimore native who now lives in New York. (He was recently an artist-in-residence at the renowned Studio Museum in Harlem.) The only freestanding work in the space, it’s a three-paneled room divider, the kind that conjures images of residential luxury. Up-close, Morris transforms it into a totem to the seemingly ordinary—plastered with found objects, from dice and dominoes to strings of pearls, shoulder pads, keys, a comb, and so on.
Part of a new series titled Thank You For Being Here!, recently on display at CPM Gallery in Bolton Hill, it considers the past lives of these forgotten materials, including the emotion and memory they hold, creating an exploration of our own human experience, in all of its love, life, death, and legacy.
That’s Music To My Ears by Derrick Adams
Haven’t had a chance to see a work by Derrick Adams in real life yet? Now’s the chance, with this acrylic and fabric television, located next to Milad’s La Cueva de la Sirena. Over the last few years, between interviews with Vogue and exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Baltimore native-turned-art-world star has been returning home often to invest in the local creative community, and, undoubtedly, find new inspiration for his own works.
Part of his ...and friends series, this piece references the educational television of Adams’ childhood, using his signature color-block style to reflect on the depictions of the Black experience in contemporary media, giving the featured Black child center stage. The word “listen” lingers in the air, serving as a reminder to the viewer.
Depending on which direction you come from, it can be easy to miss this colossal artwork, hung in the front window of the Fox Building behind three thick panes of glass. Artists Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax have been creative partners on the local scene for 15 years now, winning the prestigious Sondheim Artscape Prize in 2015, then going on to garner national recognition, such as exhibiting at New York’s Frieze. A self-portrait of sorts, this clash of digitized images is printed on two mirrors that merge with a central cherry-red frame to create a singular canvas, exploring themes of the erotic, the exaggerated, the entertaining, and embodied violence.
Look closely for fine details: the forbidden-fruit-like apples and tomatoes, the knob-like buttons featuring The Nanny actress Fran Drescher, the friendship-bracelet-like beadings, spelling out a flow of messages. Each seems to pop out of the work, blurring the reality between dimensions. “How do you know when a work is finished?” we asked the artists years ago. To which Lomax responded, “When we can really feel it being alive.”