April Bey, You About to Lose Yo Job ‘Cause You Are Detaining Me, for Nothing, 2020, Watercolor drawing on wood panel in archival epoxy resin. Hand-drilled holes and hand-sewn “African” wax fabric with oil paint impasto, 30x24. Loan courtesy of the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University.
PROFILE
April Bey grew up in the Caribbean (Nassau, Bahamas) and now resides and works in Los Angeles, California. Her interdisciplinary work is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian popular culture, immigration, contemporary pop culture feminism, generational theory, social media, Afrofuturism, and race.
She received her BFA in Drawing in 2009 from Ball State University and her MFA in Painting in 2014 at California State University, Northridge in Los Angeles. Bey is in the permanent collection of the California African American Museum, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, and Baha Mar in Nassau, Bahamas. She has exhibited internationally in biennials NE7, NE8, and NE9 in The Bahamas, and in Italy, Spain, and Ghana.
April BeyINTERVIEW
In studio with April Bey
WORKS
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Main Gallery
AMPLIFY
July 15 - October 24, 2021
Amplify focuses on the experiences of woman-identifying artists in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Virginia MOCA curators connected with curatorial colleagues and asked them to share their recommendations of woman-identifying artists who are exploring identity and the gendered roles of women.
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Summer Art Camp
Keep your kiddos engaged as the beautiful summer days grow longer. Ages 6-17 can explore their artistic side with oodles of class offerings—from digital art, skateboard design, to sculpture, collage, drawing, painting and more.
EXHIBITION
SHE SAYS Women, Words and Power
MAIN GALLERY
She Says: Women, Words and Power presents a broad range of approaches contemporary women artists are using with the incorporation of text as an essential part of their artistic practice. Each artist creates and reflects the written word as a formal building block: as way to convey trauma, to assert sexuality, or to investigate power structures on all levels. The artists come from a wide range of backgrounds and are at different stages of their lives and careers, yet, for each one text acts as a powerful visual punch. Their use of text navigates a delicate balance between image and language, personal and universal, or politics and poetry. In their investigations and declarations, we find connection, identity, and a mirror reflecting not only ourselves but the world in which we live.
Featured artists for this exhibition include April Bey, Zoë Buckman, Lesley Dill, Meg Hitchcock, Sandra Ramos, Hadieh Shafie, and Betty Tompkins.
EXHIBITION SUPPORT PROVIDED BY: PRA Group with additional support from Arleen Cohen, Susan and Andy Cohen in honor of their mothers Irene Fritsch and Lolly Cohen, Jodi and Jay Klebanoff, Southern Bank, and Kaufman & Canoles, P.C.