Just Above My Wall, To The Right

Just Above My Wall, (To The Right), showcases the work of 15 emerging and established Black art collectors from Chicago, featuring Black contemporary artworks from their collection. Each collector speaks to the importance of establishing one’s space and place in the making of a home or legacy. The collections presented speak to the collective of what mark Black contemporary artists are leaving behind in this current day, juxtaposed against the work from the South Side Community Art Center’s Collection, that captures the essence of black art from the 20th Century, most notably the 60’s and 70’s during a time when Black arts and culture was being influenced politically and racially through the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. 

The Southside Community Art Center, the first Black American art museum in the nation in its day, was created just 20 years prior to these movements by a group of Black art students from the School of the Art Institute. While we now have Black institutions like the DuSable Museum, The Studio Museum of Harlem, the California African American Museum and The Underground in Los Angeles, and National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., The South Side Community Art Center remains the vanguard and is the only remaining institution standing that was started from the WPA grants of the 1940’s. 

Collector, Tracie Hall, describes her collection as “living with the ancestors.” This show encompasses that notion and the parallelled histories between the Black artists within the South Side Community Art Center’s collection, Black artists of today, and the oeuvre of what collectors are taking note of from Black artists at the helm of 21st century movements and ideologies. 

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Collectors: Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Janelle Miller, Stephanie Graham, John Ellis, Martha Wade, Tracie Hall, Drew Enstrumental, Amanda Williams, Ayanah Moor, Alicia Goodwin, Rob McKay, Raub Welch, and Ciera McKissick

Artists Featured From Their Collection: Solomon Adufah, Robert Pruitt/Thomas Lucas, Alexandria Valentine, SHENEQUA, John  H. Blanton, Lawrence Ageyi, Krista Franklin, Adler Guerrier, Max Sansing, David Anthony Geary, Alexandra Antoine, Hebru Brantley, Zephyr, Brandon Breaux, Paul S. Benjamin, Leasho Johnson, Erin Mitchell, Cecil Mcdonald, Norman Teague,