LEARNING TO LOVE
Narrative Portraits
The Narrative Portraits series elevates the visibility of Black Queer and SGL artists across various disciplines by featuring the work of emerging contemporary artists rendered through a digital lens which explore same gender loving narratives of self-acceptance as a rite of passage towards learning to love ourselves and each other.
Khari Johnson-Ricks
Khari Johnson-Ricks (b. 1994) (He/Him) is a multimedia artist whose practice extends across media, including painting, performance, murals, zines, and nightlife spaces. In addition to Night Gallery, his work has been included in group exhibitions at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, New York; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles; Gallerie Nagel Draxler Munich Germany ; and the Elizabeth Foundation, New York, among others. He has created public murals for the city of Newark as part of Mayor Ras Baraka’s “Model Neighborhood Initiative” and “Gateways to Newark” Projects. His zines are featured in the library collections of the MET Library, the Whitney Library, and The MOMA Library. He lives and works in New Jersey.
Devin N. Morris
Devin N. Morris (He/Him) is a Brooklyn-based artist interested in abstracting American life and subverting traditional value systems through the exploration of identity, memory, and grief in mixed media paintings, photographs, writings and video. Morris was recently in Mickalene Thomas: A Moment's Pleasure at the Baltimore Museum of Art and The Aesthetics of Matter, the first NYC curatorial project by Deux Femme Noires: Mickalene Thomas and Racquel Chevremont. He was also featured in the New Museum’s MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas: Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project, and the two-person show, Inside Out, Here, at La Mama Gallery, curated by Eric Booker (Studio Museum, Exhibition Coordinator). Morris is the founder of 3 Dot Zine, which is an annual publication that serves as a forum for marginalized concerns and recently hosted the Brown Paper Zine & Small Press Fair with the Studio Museum in Harlem and created a site-specific installation at the MoMA PS1 2018 NY Art Book Fair.
Jarrett Key
Jarrett Key (He/They) (b. 1990) lives and works in Providence, RI. Key is a recent MFA graduate from RISD Painting. Key is one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 for Art and Style 2020. Key’s practice embodies several modes of production in one frame. Through form, image, and material, the objects they make integrate a sculpture, painting, and performance practice. Excavating lost stories and the oral histories that define their upbringing in rural Alabama, Key’s work seeks to criticize those historical conditions that are the seeds of contemporary issues in their life, while creating spaces that celebrate beauty, joy and survival.
Key’s work is in the collections of the The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection, the Columbus Museum, Brown University, RISD Special Collection, the Schomburg Center, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among other institutions. The Hair Painting Series series has been featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Harlem Arts Festival in Marcus Garvey Park.
Help us continue to
support Black Queer Artists.
Donate today!
All donations are tax-deductible