Exhibition Openings

Sam Gilliam was one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting.

A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. As an artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Gilliam pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation was the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

In addition to a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2005, Sam Gilliam was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York (1993); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), among many other institutions. A semi-permanent installation of Gilliam’s paintings opened at Dia:Beacon in August 2019. His work is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Having worked in the field of contemporary art for nearly 20 years, Veronica L. Hogan serves as Executive Director for Atlanta Contemporary. In addition to her director role, Hogan continues to engage the art
community as arts administrator, art historian, board member, curator, educator, and lecturer. She has curated numerous exhibitions in Atlanta for Agnes Scott College, Kessenich Contemporary (2011-2014), the Art Institute of Atlanta and Decatur (2009-2013), and was gallery and sales director for Fay Gold Gallery (2004-2010). Hogan earned her M. Phil in Art History from St. Andrews University, Scotland, in 2004.

Hasani Sahlehe grew up in a four-generation home in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. He was raised by his grandmother and among his many relatives, several of whom were musicians, educators, artists, and fervent preservers of local history and culture.

Sahlehe graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2015. His practice, keenly centered on color and exploring the possibilities of the body of paint, seeks to engage the spiritual through the material. He sees his paintings as bearers of human memory, emotion, and presence. Sahlehe’s work is rooted in abstraction, embracing a broad array of cultural practices, including color field painting, neo-expressionism, ancient and indigenous architecture and writing, and the syncretic, often improvised nature of hip hop,

Sahlehe is a recipient of a 2023 Macdowell Fellowship. He has exhibited internationally and has had solos at SCAD Museum of Art, Adams and Ollman in Portland, OR, Tops Gallery in Memphis, TN, and Gallery 12.26, in Dallas, TX among others

Y. Malik Jalal was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in the Atlanta area. He received a B.A. from Oglethorpe University in 2016, He is currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Jalal is a metalworker by trade. His work engages with the black family and legacy, it is concerned with a material discourse of resistance, labor, and refuge, Jalal had a solo exhibition in 2019 at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, and at MARCH gallery in Manhattan, among others. He has also curated exhibitions at the Hi-Lo Press, and the Alabama Contemporary and recently had an essay published in Art Papers.

Sebastian Duncan-Portuondo participates in multi-directional cultural traditions and investigates silenced histories to propose conditions for cross-identification. Stained glass channels both a sacred and Cuban-American heritage in his work. Speculative spaces implicate collective memory and hybrid identities; lyrical artworks navigate ideas of home, queerness, and displacement. Through architectural intervention, public art, performance, and object-based work he re-envisions traditions in stained glass, mosaic and light-based media.

Sebastian is a Miami based artist. He has exhibited artwork and created public projects in South Florida, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Latin America. He frequently collaborates with artists, architects, dancers, musicians and community partners. He holds a BA in Studio Art and Latin American Studies from Swarthmore College, a BFA in Painting and Art History from New World School of the Arts, and an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art .

Located in Asheville, NC, Liz Williams has worked as a visual artist for 10 years exploring the line between the real and fantastic elements of life in the South in a variety of media including photography and illustration. Her work ranges from t-shirt designs calling for the dismantling of anti-LGBTQ legislation for Equality NC to portraits of nationally acclaimed musicians to animations of family cats. She is the program manager for the Campaign for Southern Equality’s Southern Equality Studios, a project that explores how the arts can be a catalyst and force in achieving lived and legal LGBTQ equality across the South. Through her work with SES, Williams has received the Tzedek Impact Award and Center for Craft’s Craft Futures Fund.

During her spare time she enjoys singing, dancing, and laughing with her wife Amanda, along with napping with her two cats.

Based in Denver, Frankie Toan (they/them/theirs) is an artist working mostly with craft and DIY materials and techniques to create large plush sculptures, interactive works, and immersive installations. Frankie holds a BFA in Craft/Material studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, with a minor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s studies. Their current body of work consists of elongated or engorged body parts tied, arranged, and installed in conversation with each other, creating fantasy bodies. Frankie has participated in many group shows and collaborations nationwide. Recent projects include a commission for Meow Wolf’s Kaleidoscape immersive ride at Elitch Gardens and their public art installation “Public Body” for “Between Us Alleys”- a public art intervention project in downtown Denver. They have had residencies at RedLine (CO) and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN) among other places. An avid mystery theatre fan, Frankie has written 3 mystery theatre plots, including the collaborative production [Colony 933].

Erika Diamond is a textile-focused artist, curator, and educator based in Asheville, NC. Born in Germany to two ballet dancers, she grew up backstage and touring across Europe in her adolescence. This gave her early insight into the ephemeral nature of touch, the expressive qualities of the body, and the transformative capabilities of costume. In 2000, she earned a degree in Sculpture at RISD, experimenting with bronze, honey, performance, and chocolate. For the next 12 years she maintained a studio practice while working as a freelance artist assistant and art preparator in NYC, Los Angeles, and Charlotte. She was the sole proprietor of a specialty chocolate company from 2004-2010.

Diamond received her MFA in Fibers from the Craft/Material Studies department at VCU where she learned how to weave tapestry, commemorate her physical encounters through objects, and identified her preoccupation with mortality. Since then, she has lived nomadically, making her own work and teaching textile classes in Richmond, Milwaukee, Denver, NYC, and Penland. Several residencies and grants have facilitated her recent projects focusing on the politics of queer safety and visibility. Most recently, she has exhibited at Dinner Gallery, Form & Concept Gallery, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh. She has been reviewed in Metalsmith Magazine, Glasstire, and Whitehot Magazine. In the summers, as Associate Director of Galleries at Chautauqua Institution, she curates and manages exhibitions that blur distinctions between the genres of art, design, and craft.

Ongoing Conversation is a platform founded by Soude Dadras in October 2018 for showcasing artists from different backgrounds in venues around the world. Ongoing Conversation’s mission is “to bring together disparate voices in the visual arts through an international purview in order to examine cross-cultural similarities of the human condition”.
Ongoing conversation represents more than 1,000 artists from 23 countries and counting in fourteen exhibitions in international venues around the world.For more information about Ongoing Conversation, please check our website https://ongoingconversation.art or Instagram page @ongoingconversation.art