BRATTLEBORO — The newest exhibit space at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) is not located within the walls of the museum. The lighting is determined by the weather and the time of day. And you can view the art while driving or walking by at any time, day or night.
Each year since 2020, BMAC has displayed large-scale, weather-proof, digital reproductions of one artist's work in the museum's window bays, each one measuring eight feet high and seven feet wide.
Earlier this month, BMAC installed its current year-long window-bay exhibition, “Oasa DuVerney: Black Power Wave,” featuring drawings inspired in part by images of Chinese Fu dogs, the cross, and Yoruban deities.
In a statement accompanying the exhibit, DuVerney says that her series “uses the relationship we all share with water as a way to describe the need for a universal understanding of Black Power and Liberation without the exploitation of the Black body.”
“Oasa's work is bold and eye-catching, which makes it great work for our 'window gallery,'” said BMAC Director of Exhibitions Sarah Freeman. “The bright colors and graphic forms are visually interesting in and of themselves, but the symbols also invite a deeper engagement with the ideas the artist is contemplating: protection, care, and transition, specifically as these ideas apply to Black bodies.
“DuVerney has developed an iconography that combines the sense of movement and collective momentum of her Black Power Wave drawings with symbols borrowed from different cultures to create something that is both powerful and personal.”
DuVerney lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, BRIC, and Postmasters Gallery, among others.
She has taken part in residencies at BRIC Workspace, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, Smack Mellon, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency. She is the co-founder with Mildred Beltré Martinez of The Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine, a collaborative public art project.
For more information, call 802-257-0124 or visit brattleboromuseum.org.