KANSAS CITY, MO, July 17, 2024: Charlotte Street is pleased to premiere Artboards this spring by artists Celina Curry and Bernadette Negrete, currently installed at 125 Southwest Boulevard. The Artboards program is a collaboration with the Crossroads Community Association and co-sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, capturing the creative spirit of the Crossroads neighborhood and serving as an alternative outdoor platform where artists’ work can be viewed during all hours of the day. The current work will remain on view through the end of September 2024.
Curry says of her Artboards:
The documentarian impulse runs strong in my family, forming the motivation behind my work. My artboards, titled “Making Memories,” are specifically designed for the project’s dual format and aerial context. Expanding on themes of distortion and memory I explore in my practice, this pair of images is earnest in content while lampooning the urge to record every fleeting moment of beauty. Growing up as a millennial, there was a low drone of fear-mongering against technology – adults chastising me to beware of the Internet, or to get off my phone. The irony is not lost on me that members of that same older generation are now most vulnerable to scams and misinformation online. While vacationing with my aging parents last summer, I was struck by this moment – one of them on either side of me, fumbling with their smartphones, attempting to capture the glory of a Delaware sunset. As my parents’ physical and mental faculties decline, the aging process slowly reverses the roles of dependency – I have to find some humor in being the one to tell them to put their phones away at dinner. Of course, in creating this image, I am just as guilty as they are in my urge toward prophylactic nostalgia. The figures bookend the composition, reaching toward the blazing center. They exhibit the bodily distortion characteristic of my work, hinting at the image’s meaning, while filling the space of the horizontal format. The composition capitalizes on the location of the boards, with the image’s horizon meant to bleed into the real sky.
Negrete says of her Artboards:
These two images are from a short film I made last year titled Barbenheimer/Feminine rage, based on a poem I wrote of the same title. From rage to love to lust to disgust, the poem (included below) focused on how my body only feels digestible when it is naked or when it looks white. The film adaptation was filled with homages to 2010’s rom-com depictions of female leads, always white and always small, they often feature close-up shots of the female lead’s soft pearly shoulder or the edge of a perfectly white smile. For these images, I use the portions of my brown body that look the most white to create a body that the world feels comfortable enough to consume and declare beautiful.
Barbenheimer/ Feminine Rage
Someone’s new ex-girlfriend sings girlsjustwannahavefun at the bar while another girl’s boyfriend acts like an ass outside. He comes back inside without her but they leave together that same night. The cicadas came in waves. Soft and immediate like a match. A man rides his bike behind me on the streets, whispers damn girl you are just sosexy. It is decided then I was never anything to look at until someone decided I was. Another man reminds me, this time my brother, I was never a woman until someone decided I was given too much. It’s mid july in late august. The heat is dangerous. The heat makes me dangerous. The cicadas eat me alive every night. The couple across from us buys us a bottle of wine. My boyfriend fucks me in the bathroom after. My arms extended, holding up the wall. My world is an L shaped line. The sun sets in a valley or a field somewhere. While someone else’s knees get bruised. While someone else’s hair gets pulled or runs home all alone
ABOUT CELINA CURRY
Celina Curry is a multi-disciplinary painter living in Kansas City, Missouri. Originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, she attended Moore College of Art and Design and the Kansas City Art Institute, receiving a BFA in 2013. Her current practice draws inspiration from traditional painting techniques and art historical tropes, applying them to a contemporary understanding of nostalgia and neurodivergence while navigating an increasingly uncanny cultural landscape. Curry is a recent Charlotte Street studio resident (’22-24) and was featured in New American Paintings issue #167.
ABOUT BERNADETTE NEGRETE
Preferring satire to sentimentality, Bernadette Negrete dismisses the idea that poetry and art need to make grand statements, instead inhabiting a space between cowboy nonchalance and the tenderness of love and community. Negrete uses poetry and art as a way to navigate sexuality, family, feeling, and her experiences as a Mexican-American woman. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2022 and now works as an educator for Public Programs and Creative Practice at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
ABOUT CROSSROADS ARTBOARDS
Since 2008, the Crossroads Artboards has featured over 100 commissioned works by Kansas City-area artists. In partnership with the Crossroads Community Association, the Artboards capture the creative spirit of the Crossroads neighborhood while serving as an alternative platform for contemporary art. For a complete listing of artists and more information, visit charlottestreet.org/crossroads-artboards/.
ABOUT CROSSROADS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
The mission of the Crossroads Community Association shall be to support, promote, advance, and encourage the revitalization of the community as a thriving, safe and attractive center of art, history, enterprise, commerce, culture, residence, entertainment, education, and other activity; to inform and educate the members of this association and the public about community issues; to provide a forum to address community objectives and issues; to build a strong community through communication, cooperation, planning and leadership; to build a strong partnership between business owners, property owners, tenants, and residents to ensure community involvement; and to enhance the quality of life within the community. For more information visit https://kccrossroads.org/about/cca/
ABOUT MID-AMERICA ARTS ALLIANCE
Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) strengthens and supports artists, cultural organizations, and communities throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and beyond. To learn more about M-AAA grants, programs, exhibitions, and fellowships, visit www.maaa.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2.5 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects and has hosted countless exhibitions, performances, convenings, and conversations connecting and challenging Kansas City’s contemporary art ecosystem. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
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