FEED YOUR HEAD: The African Origin of The Scientific Aesthetic

Feed Your Head: The African Origins of the Scientific Aesthetic
Curated by Kalia Brooks, Director of Exhibitions
November 17, 2011 – February 25, 2012

Feed Your Head joins together two visual artists with a physicist and ethnomathematician to explore the aesthetic convergence of science and art. The exhibition focuses on teaching about science through the visual arts, as well as configurations of the world that are grounded in African-based visual systems. Feed Your Head make for an intriguing collaboration in the arts and sciences through the rubric of the African Diaspora. The point is to bring these fields together in a shared aesthetic purpose. In addition, this project seeks to encourage partnerships by creating the potential for curriculum building that connects the work of the museum with other people and places engaged in creative learning.

For this exhibition, the artists have selected to use the African-based visual symbols of Adinkra to create original works of art that are derived from the repetition of the same geometric shape, known as algorithmic fractals, and the theory of supersymmetry, which is the concept that history repeats itself. The installation is designed to give the feeling of an immersive environment where the artworks are meant to be experienced in context with each other rather than as individual units. Feed Your Head innovates new ways in thinking about teaching, learning, exhibition-making, partnerships and research in the visual arts, and offers an opportunity to expand each participant’s body of work through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Artists: Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., Tanea Richardson and Ron Eglash

*Image credit: Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, black is the nite (Round the World), stop motion animation video still, 2011.

Artist Talk
Friday, November 18 | 7:00 – 9:00pm
MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
Moderated by curator Kalia Brooks

Educator’s Workshop
Tuesday, December 6 | 7:00 – 9:00pm
MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
Art educators will learn new techniques to integrate art and science into their teaching practices. The workshop will conclude with a physical rendering in paper sculpture and other media. Led by Professor Audrey Bennett from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

Children’s Program
Saturday, December 10 | 1:00 – 3:00pm
MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
Adinkra stamp textile workshop for children and families, led by a MoCADA Teaching Artist.

Thinking & Creating in Five Dimensions
Thursday, January 12 | 7:00 – 9:00pm
MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
Lecture and workshop led by designer and architect Trudy Miller to explore the space- time continuum through fashion.

Children’s Program
Saturday, February 18 | 1:00 – 3:00pm
MoCADA, 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn
Children learn the mathematics of braiding and cornrows through art making. Led by Professor Audrey Bennett from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

All programs are free and open to the public.

Special thanks to Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., Tanea Richardson and Ron Eglash, University of Maryland (UMD), Rensselear Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and Media MVMT.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum