Bling Bound
Artfare and Assembly Room Gallery
July 12-25, 2020

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In the exhibition Bling Bound, Shoshanna Weinberger (b. 1973) explores the tension between personal expression and social control through jewelry adornment. Seductive, shiny, and threatening, these works prompt reflection on themes of commodity, glamor, and the objectification and oppression of black and brown women’s bodies. A Newark-based, Caribbean-American artist, Weinberger explores themes of identity, racial categorization, and Western markers of beauty through her series of archetypal female muses. Portrayed with exaggerated and sexualized physical features, such as lips, hair, legs, and buttocks, these abstracted figures often appear bound in gold chains, their bodies manipulated and deformed by the gilded metal. Viewed amid international protests for Black Lives following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, these works highlight inherited social systems of abuse and bondage--systems that so often retain their power through the facades of false gold.

 25% of artwork sales for this exhibition went to Black Women’s Blueprint, a social justice organization that provides resources for black women to participate in intersectional grassroots efforts on issues relating to criminal justice, police violence, economic justice, and education. In 2014, the organization launched an initiative to document black women’s stories of sexual violence survival in an effort to increase prevention efforts. 

Artist Bio:
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Shoshanna Weinberger received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Yale School of Art. Living and working in Newark, NJ, Weinberger explores the standards, consequential implications, and experiences of racial identity and the external perception or imposition of racial categorization. Referencing her own memory and our current xenophobic zeitgeist, Weinberger renders her female muses along a spectrum of character types that ultimately questions standards and the psychology of beauty and identity.

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