Graduation Call & Response.

Very please to be participating in this online exhibition!

Press Release: Curatorial Lab V, "Jite Agbro: Graduation (call and response)"

November 29, 2017 in Curatorial Lab

Negarra A. Kudumu | essayist and curator will present its fifth Curatorial Lab project, Graduation (call and response), by Seattle-based artist Jite Agbro opening November 30, 2017 and running through January 6, 2018. 

In the artist's own words,

"There is a ritual to graduating
The ceremonial gowns,
The external acknowledgment of accomplishment,
The feeling of completion.
All these things give us permission to move on.

A notable conclusion indicates that we are moving on to better things. Or, at least, different things.  There is a loss felt underneath every achievement. You must be transformed in order to come to terms with each new loss, this is the essence of graduating."

These images were taken in the Promenade Market, located in Seattle's rapidly changing - some may say fading - Central District neighborhood. As the neighborhood changed, it became one of the few shopping areas that still catered to the tastes of the shrinking African-American community that inhabited the area. Agbro, like many Blacks born and/or raised in the Central District, shopped there regularly and recalls fondly the various cultural markers that made the market a loci of community activity.

The questions embedded within Agbro's graduation dress draw our attention to the losses, material and emotional, that come along with achievement. We celebrate the newness and the aesthetic of moving on to, presumably bigger and better things. For how long do we - can we - mourn the loss of that thing or experiences we have left behind?

Agbro's dress is a symbol of all the beauty and uncertainty within which resides a now silent tale about the cumulative life experiences that spurred it's creation.