Diaspora Vibe Gallery: Art Basel 2008

This year -end we discuss our sense of space and safety, in “Safety Zones” ; These questions fit under the umbrella of discussions examining or political consciousness that is critical to art making today. We have settled on exhibition twelve artists together, featuring paintings, video, installation and photography. We will expand our walls to include Art Center - 942 Lincoln Road – featuring Geraldo Gonzalez’s paintings , Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud’s – performance art and Deborah Jack’s photography .

“Safety Zones” features art with content, art that reveals at least an awareness of issues as diverse as labor and working conditions, political freedom and or the lack of it , environmental beauty, sex, war , poverty, happiness, homelessness, hope. Some of the artists working in film and video use quasi- documentary fashion while others use metaphorical references to communicate their ideas.

Beginning on December 4, DVG will present Safety Zones; recent works by US based Caribbean American Artists and International Artists who created new work in 2007. The primary intention of the exhibition is to present and discuss pieces by these artists who are working in mixed media and new media.

With the significant and ugly racial incidents that have marked 2007, now more than ever, it is important to have a conversation about the political landscape in the U.S. using work just like this to spark debate about multi-cultural lives and living and the concept of safety in specific spaces whether it is your home, your neighborhood or the country in which you live. Has the idea of the melting pot gone awry? -- (Content provided by Rosie Gordon-Wallace November 2008)