Art shapes UNC's culture

The gallery is white-walled and sparse, the polished wooden floors gleaming. In such humble settings, the delicate and colorful art garners attention.

The exhibit, “Como se Cuenta el Cuento (How to Tell the Story): Tradition and Change on the Congo Coast of Panama,” opened Monday in the Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery and Museum at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

It features the works of “El Taller Portobelo” (The Portobelo Workshop), a community-based art collective from Portobelo, Panama. Rich in the exultation of Panamanian Carnival traditions, Afro-Panamanian identities and the Congo aesthetic, the exhibit draws from African ancestry, Catholic ritual and indigenous spirituality.

 

IF YOU GO

DATE: Feb. 14 through April 30

TIME: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays

LOCATION: Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery and Museum

INFO: www.ibiblio.org/shscbch/

Different pieces from the national exhibit have rotated to galleries across the country. Recently, many of the works were on display in Atlanta at the Hammond House Galleries and Resource Center of African-American Art.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Brown Gallery outreach coordinator, aided in bringing the show to the Stone Center and traveled to Atlanta to choose pieces for UNC.

Sunstrum said that the exhibit is particularly dynamic because of the rotation of the pieces — even if you’ve seen one exhibit, you haven’t seen it all.

The selected works in the Brown Gallery represent many artists and give a good sense of development in the workshop. Pieces range from the earlier to the more recent, Sunstrum said, and also represent a global aesthetic.

“The Stone Center is concerned with celebrating and exploring the culture of black diaspora and the use of visual art to rediscover cultural identity,” she said.

“There’s an empowering aspect because it gives a voice and place for Congo culture.”

Although the exhibit displays a different world view, its beauty can be seen and noted by all, Sunstrum said.

The exhibit serves artists and the University and opens a different world view.

“There is a specificity to the collection, but also a universality — even people with no artistic understanding can appreciate it,” she said.

“It’s self-taught art so people can recognize it on a conceptual level, and it’s reminiscent of other Southern folk-art traditions.”

Arturo Lindsay, one of the founders of the workshop, said the project started out of the need to reorganize a tradition that is more than 300 years old.

The purpose of the exhibit is to preserve those traditions and “make art to provide an economic outlet,” he said.

Some of the artists featured are academically trained in their craft, but most are not. The workshop critiques artists’ submissions and facilitates a dialogue that influences participants in different kinds of learning, Lindsay said.

To augment the exhibit, faculty from UNC, Spelman College and Northwestern University will present a roundtable discussion titled “Como se Cuenta el Cuento en la Diaspora Africana (How to Tell the Story in the African Diaspora),” at 7 p.m. Feb. 24 in the Hitchcock multipurpose room of the Stone Center.

Contact the A&E Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.