ON VIEW
Punk Noir
January 25 – March 21, 2020
Featuring portraits of black musicians, filmmakers, photographers and other creatives — Punk Noir revels in the divine feminine and masculine embodiments of its subjects. Nigerian American artist, Dawn Okoro, uses energetic colors and the complexion of her characters to manipulate the quality of light, offering an alternative to life lived on a stark white canvas in a black body.
Opening Reception:
Saturday, Jan. 25 | 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Admission is free and open to the general public.
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More About Punk Noir:
Across numerous bodies of work, Okoro adopts compositional techniques from fashion photography while partially obscuring faces and bodies to address issues of erasure, and its particular impact on black women. In Punk Noir, Okoro disputes the image of punk that has long been occupied by whiteness in favor of an afrocentric world view. This more nuanced version of blackness (e.g. punk noir) exists far beyond its aesthetic value. It is anti-establishment in nature, and working to reclaim and reveal its influence in music, fashion and art.
About Dawn Okoro:
Heavily influenced by fashion as a means of aesthetic expression and resistance — Dawn Okoro’s work examines standards of beauty and the use of commercial imagery to commodify desire. Informed by compositional techniques used in fashion photography, Okoro draws inspiration from popular culture. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Drawing Magazine, and on BET’s The First Wives Club. She has shown at the Texas Biennial, George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, New York University, and the MoCADA Museum in Brooklyn. She resides and works in Austin, Texas.
Antithesis., Dawn Okoro, 2020
Dawn Okoro
ARTHELLO BECK AND EMERGING ARTISTS GALLERY
The South Dallas Cultural Center’s two visual art galleries feature innovative and thought-provoking exhibitions that address a range of social and cultural themes. Our exhibition program presents influential local, regional, and national artists such as Phoenix Savage, Pucci Lisenbee, and Ciare Elle Bryant.
South Dallas Cultural Center’s visual art galleries was named in honor of artist and long-time SDCC supporter, Arthello Beck. A South Dallas native, Beck dedicated his life to the arts and supporting African American culture. He traveled extensively, showcasing his works in cultural institutions across the world. By the 1970’s, Beck and his wife, Mae, established the Arthello Beck Gallery in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas. Arthello Beck passed away in 2004 and our galleries became his namesake in 2007. The South Dallas Cultural Center is proud to pay tribute to Beck’s unyielding creativity and his profound affection for the culture and lives of Black people.
