Marthalicia Matarrita is a brilliant painter.  Nothing else really needs to be said – although there is plenty to her story.  Her passion is sparked and sustained by the fundamentals of hip-hop and live painting. However, the depth of her work in texture, mood and content reveals much more. With a family background that includes infinite love and loyalty peppered with alcoholism, homelessness, schizophrenia, limited funds and shelter living, Marthalicia has reached a point in her life where her spirit is grounded in hope, discovery, community, and her siblings.

(Marthalicia Mattarita, Four Masked Faces, acrylic with toilet paper)

Marthalicia’s paintings speak the language of the soul.  Power, individuality and movement infuse each work in a reflection and metaphor of human endurance and the triumph of the spirit.  In a way that only artists can articulate she uses paint to express the inexpressible – the sensations and feelings housed within the human body that call out to a larger universe for a voice.

(Marthalicia Matarrita, Statue of Liberty’s Daughter, acrylic on canvas, and 1st live painting at the Bowery Poetry Club, 2006)

This element of expression in her work finds a home in the hip-hop lexicon of imagery that is after all fundamentally about knowledge of self, spontaneity inflected with divine essence and having fun.  Her articulation of emotion through a tricked out hip-hop form gives Marthalicia’s deeply powerful work a lightness of being.  Whether it is the use of references, colors or inflections each piece translates effortlessly into an urban dialogue.  On top of this, traces of surrealism, cubism and even perhaps a 21st century Rufino Tamayo, can be found interspersed in her painterly language.

(Marthalicia Matarrita, untitled – work in progress)

Harlem, USA based Marthalicia, is a self described, “mother, sister, daughter, artist, entrepreneur, community advocate – trained in the martial arts.”   If that’s not enough, she was also scheduled to go to Iraq twice as a member of the Army National Guard. Fortunately, her units 1st tour was postponed, she was 3 months pregnant.  The second tour was also delayed and her duty was up in 2005.  After 10 years in the making, in 2006 Marthalicia and her 2 brothers and 1 sister formed M-Squared Art Productions, a collective grounded in the four elements of hip-hop. M-Squared integrates art and music into the party landscape of New York City with Marthalicia’s specialty being, live painting.

(Marthalicia Matarrita, untitled – sketches)

For more information visit Marthalicia’s M-Squared website. Or purchase a self-published book of her artwork here!

(Marthalicia Matarrita, Blue Mother and Child Series #3, acrylic and house paint, 6′ x 4′)

Early 21st century African Diaspora inter-continental dance moves are mysteriously similar.  The Memphis (not Egypt, Tennessee) Jook and South African Kwaito styles need to battle it out on the global stage an show ‘em how it’s done.   Check it out….

Kwaito >>>>> watch!

Memphis Jook >>>>> watch!

Kali Arulpragasam/SUPERFERTILE has done it again. Another line of jewels that illuminate global issues through beauty and creativity.  Her latest line, HUNGER, highlights the global food crisis. Through the use of staple foods like wheat, chick peas, rice, beans and lentils, recreated in gold and silver, the HUNGER line highlights the priceless nature of essential foods.  The cost of each piece depends on the weight and the work/staple food used.  Kali’s premiere line, TOURISM (Terrorism affects Tourism), featured in the Feb ‘08 issue of Cultureserve, addressed the media’s focus on negative representations of countries like Iraq and Sri Lanka.  Representations that highlight men with guns instead of women, children and the natural habitat. View the HUNGER look book at Superfertile.com.

The Rubell Family Collection’s most recent exhibition, 30 Americans, offers an inter-generational survey of African American art collected over several decades by the Rubells.  The show articulates a dialogue between multiple generations of African American artists and the influence one has on the next.  For example the influence of Barkley L. Hendricks in the work of artists like Mickalene Thomas or Jeff Sonhouse. Or perhaps Basquiat in the work of Shinique Smith.  The references, conscious or unconscious, reflect the dialogue of a particular niche of the art world that has created a place for itself based on the work of not only artists, but curators, writers, collectors and galleries/museums.  Institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem/Thelma Golden, as well as, individuals like Franklin Sirmans, Isolde Brielmaier and Trevor Schoonmaker, to name a few, have all contributed to the  building of a “value” structure for African American artists based on standard art market requirements.  A pedigreed list of education, residencies, critics, publications and collectors – like the Rubells.  And, this work is based on the structural, institutional and critical work of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement.

(Rashid Johnson,The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood), 2008, Lambda print, Ed. 2/5, 69 x 55 1/2 in. (175.3 x 141 cm), framed Rubell Family Collection, Miami)

Careful to note their own physical, financial and intellectual limitations, the Rubell Family Collection’s exhibition statement acknowledges that there are artists that are not in their collection that could have easily been included in the exhibition.  The exhibition statement also states that they chose the title “30 Americans” instead of “30 African Americans”, “because nationality is a statement of fact, while racial identity is a question each artist answers in his or her own way, or not at all.”   Some of the artists not included, Wardell Milan, Deborah Grant, Titus Kaphar, William Cordova, are artists who are part of this niche dialogue to varying degrees or are immigrants and Latino.

“30 Americans” The Rubell Family Collection is on view until May 30, 2009 at The Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida.

In an effort to democratize art making and give longtime residents of Miami’s Wynwood District an opportunity to respond to the arts scene flourishing in their own hood, the Miami Workers Center partnered with photographer Noelle Theard to create Galeria del Barrio, a photo exhibit that explores the boundaries of displacement and resistance.

(Installation Galeria del Barrio, Miami Wynwood District, 2008)

The project generated its content through photo workshops held for Miami en Accîon (MIA), a Wynwood residents group which has fought gentrification and encouraged community activism in the longtime Latino neighborhood.  MIA then took the Galeria del Barrio exhibit to the streets by staging a public art intervention during the 2008 Miami arts season (December), when Art Basel and other satellite fairs took over the city.  Residents showed that Wynwood is more than a backdrop for collectors and galleries – it is a home and place of community.

(Installation Galeria del Barrio, Miami Wynwood District, 2008)

About 200 people visited La Galeria del Barrio, made from a converted bread truck and parked in the heart of Wynwood arts district on Saturday, December 6, and 100 people attended a special event held in the home of an MIA member on December 3.   The project received local media coverage in the Miami Herald and on Telemundo.