KATES-FERRI PROJECTS presents HE SAID, SHE SAID, a duo presentation of mixed media paintings from Turiya Magadlela and ceramic sculptures by Rudy Shepherd at 1:54NY Contemporary African Art Fair, located at 461 West 127th Street NYC, Booth #07 on view Friday, May 19, until Sunday, May 21, 2023, with a VIP reception on Thursday, May 18, 2023.

Turiya Magadlela’s powerful and compelling works of art using materials such as women’s nylon pantyhose stitched together and stretched over canvas create active color theories and convey the artist’s concerns with the fragility of women around the world and their lack of equality. Through her practice, she hopes to bring these issues to the forefront.

“I draw to matters that concern me, such as the way women are treated in my country of Africa, with the violent cutting of female circumcision in newborn babies and young girls. I speak to the misfortunes of inequalities in female-based industries as well as matters such as ageism, racialism, and how capitalism without concern for moral values has left many women and children in hell holes all around the world.” Through her practice, Turiya also brings attention to consumerism and greed that leaves vast amounts of pollution dumped in Africa: “We have rich European and American individuals who use our land for leisure without consideration of local needs and local struggles and governments who allow this to happen because they lack resources -, for example, we do not manufacture our own clothes and our own food. Meanwhile, China’s produces items in excess that are rejected in the first world and get dumped on our shores.”

In response to Magadlela’s works on canvas, Rudy Shepherd creates a grouping of sculptures: Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers and Healing Devices, handmade and fire glazed by the artist.
The Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers are a group of sculptures meant to remove negative energy from people and allow them to respond to life with the more positive aspects of their personality. Growing out of this exploration for solutions to the overwhelming forces of negative energy has come a series of ceramic sculptures called the Healing Device’s, sculptures that resemble tools of unknown function meant to suggest healing processes. Full of color and life, these glazed ceramic sculptures speak to the healing power of art and belief. Shepherd’s work explores the nature of evil through the mediums of painting, drawing, performance, and sculpture. This exploration involves investigations into the lives of criminals and victims of crime. He explores the complexity of these stories and the grey areas between innocence and guilt in a series of paintings and drawings of both the criminals and the victims, making no visual distinctions between the two.

“I believe art has the power to make us question and thus make us change our reality/world. I also believe it has the power to heal, to suggest new realities, to show us a way towards that better place that lives inside of all of us.”

South African Artist Turiya Magadlela (b.1978, Johannesburg, S. Africa) works with art making techniques that are traditionally used by women, using sewing and embroidery on various conceptually loaded fabrics, from pantyhose to correctional service uniforms, and creates abstract compositions by cutting, stitching, folding, and stretching these materials across canvas structures.

Her subject matter moves between articulations of personal experiences of woman and motherhood, and narratives from South African history.  Magadlela engages in a conversation on the colonization of black bodies and women; her art uses materials capitalist in nature at a time when commoditization is ever more prescient.

Rudy Shepherd (b. 1975, Baltimore, MD) received an MFA in sculpture from the School of Art Institute of Chicago.  He has been in solo exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, NY, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, the Bronx Museum of Art, among others.

Shepherd’s work explores the nature of evil through the mediums of painting, drawing and sculpture.  This exploration involves investigations into the lives of criminals and victims of crime.  He explores the complexity of these stories and the grey areas between innocence and guilt in a series of paintings and drawings of both the criminals and the victims, making no visual distinctions between the two.  Going along with these portraits is a series of sculptures called Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers.  They are a group of sculptures meant to remove negative energy from people allowing them to respond to life with the more positive aspects of their personality.

Growing out of this exploration for solutions to the overwhelming forces of negative energy has come a series of ceramic sculptures called the Healing Device’s and a series of paintings of Holy Mountains, sacred spaces from all over the world that are central to the religious and cultures of the world and a series of live performances featuring a character Shepherd created called The Healer.

Press Release Price List Art Works on View Turiya Magadlela & Rudy Shepherd Exhibition on YouTube