Qualeasha Wood’s digital transfer tapestries are an ongoing inquiry into blackness, queerness and narratives associated with those experiences in past, present and future imaginings. By combining meditative tableau’s of self-portraiture with Catholic iconography, Wood cultivates a rich tête-à-tête around figuration of the black femme body.
In Cult Following text features prominently in an arc framing the figure, “God is a young hot ebony and she’s on the internet.”

In another instance, Love and Basketball Wood employs repeating emoji icons alongside text where black angel babies, basketballs and the golden ankh hang against a backdrop of a classical cloudy-heavy blue sky. If viewers are unsure to whom or at what their gaze is directed, Wood clarifies in her titling: the audience is implicated.


Qualeasha Wood, Cult Following, 2018, Digital transfer on jacquard, glass beads, 51 x74 inches || 129.54 x 187.96 centimeters. Courtesy Kendra Jayne Patrick and the artist.


Qualeasha Wood, I’m Tired (of your bullshit), You Tired (of me complaining), (I) Jesus Wept, 2019, Jacquard weave, glass beads, 54 x 71 inches || 138 x 180 centimeters. Courtesy Kendra Jayne Patrick and the artist.


Qualeasha Wood, See God in the Mirror, 2020, Digital transfer on jacquard, glass beads 51 x 74 inches || 138 x 188 centimeters. Courtesy Kendra Jayne Patrick and the artist.


Qualeasha Wood, Love and Basketball, 2019, Jacquard weave, metal, glitter, 54 x 71 inches || 138 x 180 centimeters. Courtesy Kendra Jayne Patrick and the artist.

Raque Ford’s installation, Every Day I Have the Blues, is currently on view at P.P.O.W as part of the group exhibition titled, “Noplace.”

Typical of Ford’s installation work, there is a focus on materials that are synthetic and translucent marked with spray paint or scuffed with the residue of usage. For this installation, vertical panels of polypropylene, covered in heavy brush strokes are held upright, flanked by metal chains suspended from the ceiling and lay tumbling in heaps on the floor.


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020, acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020 (detail), acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020 (detail), acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020 (detail), acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020, acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna


Raque Ford, Every Day I Have the Blues, 2020 (detail), acrylic and spray paint on polypropylene, steel chains. Courtesy P.P.O.W, photos: Daniel Terna

“So What” is a group exhibition at Company Gallery, including G.B Jones, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Robert Bittenbender, Sadie Barnette, Theresa Chromati, Cajsa von Zeipel, DeSe Escobar, Victoria Colmegna, Will Sheldon, E. Jane, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, and Women’s History Museum. These works investigate the alchemic powers of adolescence and are hosted exclusively on Tumblr. The “So What,” Tumblr page features an essay by Kay Gabriel and a track by SHYBOI, also titled “So What.” Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s work mixes the at first seemingly opposing hand-heavy work of oil painting and embroidery, in “There is a vacuum inside all of us.” Jaeger’s investigation of the erotic female body invites moments of acuity and casual wit. Theresa Chromati’s surrealist painting hints at sublime radical empiricism, “Stepping toward my darkest bits to hear a familiar song. The words have changed, but the melody caresses me all the same (woman lead by her intuition supported by scrotum flower.”Dese Escobar’s quadriptych “Eleganzia” is a classic still life on a marble dining table, with jewelry on an opal dinner plate, flanked by depression-era blush pink wine glasses.


Digital installation view


Sadie Barnette, </em>Untitled (Gold Macintosh), 2019, Gold metal flake on vintage Macintosh computer Monitor: 13.5 x 9.75 x 10.75 inches


Digital installation view


Theresa Chromati, Stepping toward my darkest bits to hear a familiar song. The words have changed but the melody caresses me all the same (woman lead by her intuition supported by scrotum flower) 2020, Acrylic and glitter on canvas 24h x 18w in 60.96h x 45.72w cm


DeSe Escobar Eleganzia, 2020, Inkjet print, canola oil, epoxy resin on vellum 17h x 14w in 43.18h x 35.56w cm Unique

Topical Cream has put together a list of simple suggestions to help keep you safe and sanitized.


Photo Credit: David Brandon Geeting

Depending on where you’re sheltering in place, and how local stores have been dealing with hoarders, toilet paper can be virtually impossible to find. But there’s a surprising place where it’s readily available, eBay. One ply, two ply, three ply, all are available on eBay. Though most listings are legitimate, be sure to check for the seller’s star rating and the delivery expectations. Another alternative route is Amazon novelty toilet paper, it’s not ideal but if you’re in a pinch it’ll ship to you quickly.

To be clear, buying toilet paper isn’t the only solution. If you’re an environmentally conscious person, now might be a good time to try a bidet. The word “bidet” itself invokes visions of grand European hotels, but they’re actually relatively simple devices that can just attach to your toilet. There are many options available on Amazon for around $40.

Rubbing Alcohol (especially that of the 99% potency) has been the white whale of COVID-19 shopping, and it makes sense. Pre-Ides-of-March 2020 Rubbing Alcohol (was) relatively cheap and ubiquitous. However, prices have soared and supplies are scarce as more and more people have started to hoard this necessity. However, it’s not the only option for home cleaning, — Hydrogen Peroxide and H20 in a spray bottle is a great option for cleaning COVID-19 from your counter-tops.

 

While taking your temperature is a good barometer of your health and wellness, COVID-19 is a disease of the respiratory system. To get a full picture of your health (especially if you aren’t feeling well), monitoring your oxygen levels is just as important. It’s very easy to do with a home pulse oximeter. A pulse oximeter is a noninvasive simple device that is placed on a non-polished finger or earlobe. It uses infrared lights sent through your capillaries to get a reading of your current blood oxygen level.

Touch has been put on notice. As a safety precaution, the CDC recommends that we stay at least 6-feet away from each other, and wash our hands as often as possible. As this new reality alters the way we connect with everyone and everything around us, we wanted to suggest a simple object that “hits,” both crucial guidelines recommended by the CDC. A touchless soap dispenser is a great option right now. Even if this is something you wouldn’t normally consider, it’s a simple object that can help keep you and your hands cleaner, and safer for now.

If you have any other tips to share, please contact us @ rx@topicalcream.info

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Woman applying elbow cream, isolated on a white background


Topical Cream is committed to supporting Women and GNC artists during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak.
Please check out the many free resources compiled below.

Queer Writers of Color Relief Fund This fund is for queer writers of color who are in need of financial assistance. The fund will make disbursements once per day.

CERF+ Emergency Relief Fund Artists who have suffered from a recent, career-threatening emergency, such as an illness, accident, fire or natural disaster, can apply for funding. CERF+ also has a list of resources centered around the pandemic.

Freelance Artist Resources A list of resources specifically designed to serve freelance artists, and those interested in supporting the independent artist community, including actors, designers, producers, technicians, stage managers, musicians, and more.

Rauschenberg Emergency Grant NYFA and the Rauschenberg Foundation have teamed up to offer visual and media artists and choreographers in the US grants of up to $5,000 for medical-related emergencies.

Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
Do you have an unanticipated opportunity to present your work? Did you incur an unexpected expense that you didn’t budget for? The Foundation for Contemporary Arts offers Emergency Grants between $200 and $2500 for visual and performing artists. They review applications once a month, so you can quickly take advantage of momentum or solve any budget errors.

NYFA Emergency Grants List
The New York Foundation for the Arts has a running list of additional emergency grant opportunities for artists, categorized by disciplines.

Gottlieb Emergency Grant Program
This emergency grant provides financial assistance to painters, printmakers, and sculptors whose needs are the result of an unforeseen incident, and who lack the resources to meet that situation.

Boston Artist Relief Fund
The Boston Artist Relief Fund will award grands of $500 and $1000 to individual artists who live in Boston whose creative practices and incomes are being adversely impacted by Coronavirus.

Arts and Culture Leaders of Color Emergency FundThis emergency fund can provide up to $200 for people of color that are either working artist or art administration and are affected by COVID-19.

COVID-19 Financial Solidarity
If your livelihood is being impacted by the Coronavirus crisis and you need support, post requests here.

Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council Emergency Fund for Artists
As of March 17, we will be temporarily modifying our Emergency Fund for Artists (EFFA) application guidelines to address the current needs of artists in the Greater Pittsburgh area. The Emergency Fund for Artists will now provide up to $500 in assistance to artists experiencing loss of income due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Find a Blood Drive Here

Sign Nada’s Change.org petition Here

Rent Relief Here

2020 was an aspirational year; with the start of a new decade, many felt it symbolized a new beginning. Now that COVID-19 has taken over every technophile’s child-hood dream and instability seems to infiltrate us with every ping; what can art have to say during this time of disillusion in 2020? Doesn’t Whine by Blue Moon, opening before the virus crashed into our lives, sold itself in the text accompanying the exhibition as “a love song of warning,” and it seems now even more poignant. The group show at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles looks at decay, anxiety, and grief, leaving an open-ended resolution for the viewer.


Installation View, Zoe Koke and Bri Williams Doesn’t Whine by Blue Moon, OChi Projects Los Angeles.

The exhibition curated by Alix Vernet and Zoe Koke looks with an archaeological eye at images and objects left over from a recently lost past. John Divola’s photographs of derelict structures juxtaposed against Zoe Koke’s “Red Tide” and “Castle for the Left” by Papademetropolous, suggest an illusory landscape that once held life, but now only seems to expel it.


Zoe Koke, Red Tide, 2019 C Print 36x52in (91.4×132.1cm) OG2474.

Alix Vernet’s “Office Ruin,” is composed of upcycled fiberglass ceiling tiles repurposed into a small cornerstone, these bricks have no actual substance or weight and point to the emptiness of culture in corporate culture. Vernet is one of the curators of the exhibition and recently commented that “All these concerns around confinement/quarantine, are things that have historically existed in women’s art practice; including traditions of domestic poetry, sculpture, and activism.'”


Installation View, Alix Vernet and John Divola, Doesn’t Whine by Blue Moon, OChi Projects, Los Angeles

A decaying horse, with no head, “Medusa,” bucking in vain, seems a relevant metaphor for the landscape of 2020.

Bri Williams, Medusa, 2018, soap, carousel horse, rubber paint, rhinestones, 36x48in

Doesn’t Whine by Blue Moon, includes work by Arielle Chiara, John Divola, Zoe Koke, Ser Serpas, Kamaria Shepherd, Alix Vernet, Bri Williams and Ariana Papademetropoulos at Ochi Project in Los Angeles.

Kim Gordon’s second solo exhibition “The Bonfire” presents a body of new works that mix together a range of cultural vantage points and disparate iconographies through multi-media works, photographs and painted canvases. Gordon tackles the issues of safety and privacy reflecting our current reality where it seems no image is uncaptured and the concept of intimacy has been reduced to a digitized frame of constant surveillance.


Kim Gordon, Installation view: The Bonfire, 303 Gallery, New York, 2020. Photo: John Berens.

The photographs are accompanied with “Los Angeles, June 6, 2019,” a film in which Gordon walks around Los Angeles with a guitar, utilizing objects around her- from handrails to light poles to public sculpture in a performance that quite literally uses the city as a sounding board. The show is a striking look at the artist’s nuanced and expansive oeuvre: we may know we are being watched but it is up to us to reassert control over the ever-growing tech evolution.


Kim Gordon, Los Angeles June 6, 2019. Video installation with one channel of video (color, sound), eight monitors, three resin stools, 16:06 minutes. 303 Gallery, New York, 2020. Photo: John Berens.

New exhibition of work by Aria Dean, Helen Marten, Kelley Walker, Olga Balema, and Raque Ford brings together a selection of contemporary sculpture by international artists. Once considered the domain of male artists, these female artists deconstruct the gendered division of the medium and help evolve the future of sculpture.


Installation view, Aria Dean, Helen Marten, Kelley Walker, Olga Balema, Raque Ford, Greene Naftali, New York, 2020.

The display weaves together various narratives and subject matters: whereas Aria Dean questions modes of representation in her “Replica,” Raque Ford’s “I did it for myself” explores the ever-complicated mother-daughter relationship. These women embrace industrial materials and techniques as part of a bold sculptural language, choosing to reject traditional methods of casting or modeling.


Raque Ford, I did it for myself, 2019 (detail), Acrylic, Greene Naftali, New York, 2020.

While Helen Marten and Olga Balema used found objects and assemblage in their works, Kelley Walker constructed her “So We Joked about Always Wanting” with a contorted windshield. Subject matter is suppressed, the figure abandoned; and emphasis is placed on the art object itself indicating the artists’ interest in methods of display and how the display is used to enhance or twist truths and meanings.


Olga Balema, Manifestations of our own wickedness and future idiocy, 2017, Rowlux Paper, steel, photographs, 100 x 204 x 80 inches (254 x 518.2 x 203.2 cm), Greene Naftali, New York, 2020.

Jessica Stoller uses porcelain and china painting to reassess the history of ceramics and its gendered prejudice. Stoller employs complex techniques such as hand-building and carving to create a myriad of objects that challenge patriarchal power structures. The exhibition’s centerpiece Bloom, a surreal sprawl of flora and fauna with an abstracted decaying body emerging all-around a myriad of richly colored flowers, represents miraculousness of the female body in its ability to give life. Though playful and aesthetically pleasing, “Spread” explores the constructed world of idealized femininity and desire, gender discrimination of the medium, and the natural cycle of life.


Jessica Stoller, Untitled (lift), 2019. Porcelain, glaze, china paint. PPOW Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artist and PPOW Gallery.


Jessica Stoller, Spread, 2020. Installation view, PPOW Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artist and PPOW Gallery.

“There is always an element of dark humor in my work as there is in my personality.”


Marie Karlberg, Illusion and Reality, 2019. Installation view. TRAMPS, New York. Courtesy of the artist and TRAMPS.

“Illusion and Reality,” a solo exhibition by Swedish artist Marie Karlberg, which includes seven single-channel video works where participating art workers and artists improvise in common settings of the art scene using satire. From a gallery dinner to a studio visit to the opening of an exhibition…the footage highlights the established absurdity of the scene. Karlberg is a master of placing dark humor and exaggeration to examine the FOMO machine in which global markets flourish.


Marie Karlberg, Illusion and Reality, 2019. Installation view. TRAMPS, New York. Courtesy of the artist and TRAMPS.

“Illusion and Reality” includes a number of sculptures, prints, and installations that goes hand in hand with three performances by Marie that will take place over the course of the exhibition.


Marie Karlberg, Illusion and Reality, 2019. Detail. TRAMPS, New York. Courtesy of the artist and TRAMPS.