For Artsy Foundations, we are pleased to present a special group exhibition of works by Shagha Ariannia, Cross Lypka, Chris Fallon, Masako Miki, Sarah Palmer, and Ruxue Zhang. The artists selected for Foundations collectively and individually demonstrate the breadth of CULT Aimee Friberg as a platform for rigorous work that is both experimental and attuned to the social complexities of the present moment. Each artist represents CULT’s engagement with both a broader Bay Area and an international audience through programming that allows artists to take risks with their work, approach and reconstruct their inherited and observed cultural narratives, and explore various mediums and methodologies. The six artists shown here range from those CULT has worked with for over a decade to younger artists we have just begun working with, and through this scope we offer a glimpse into the perseverance and agility of the gallery.

CULT Aimee Friberg and the ICA San Jose are delighted to announce their co-presentation of Adrian L. Burrell’s new film The Saints Step in Kongo Time as a Special Project at Untitled Art Miami Beach. For its East Coast premiere, the film will be presented on a screen in the entrance to the fair alongside an installation by the artist collective For Freedoms. The fair opens to the public on November 29 and runs through December 3, with VIP preview on Monday, November 28.

Through a combination of film, photography, sculpture and installation, Adrian L. Burrell’s work closes the gap between oral history, written text and moving image while creating a space for collective memory. As a masterful storyteller, Burrell foregrounds the importance of place in our practices of memory and ritual.

The Saints Step in Kongo Time is a visual meditation on Burrell’s family's untold history, using film, oral histories, primary sources, and photography. With a running time of eighteen minutes, this poetic short film spans several generations from Burrell’s roots in Louisiana to his family's relocation to California. The film weaves through time and place, from Burrell visiting the land stolen from his ancestors to the family’s archival footage from West Oakland in the 1990s to the present day, showcasing their resilience and fortitude.

Burrell writes, “For Black America, family histories did not enter the annals due to a lack of legal personhood and equal recognition by the State.” In advance of this film Burrell worked with an investigative genealogist, connecting with relatives currently living in New Iberia, Louisiana. Burrell adds, “After investigating my family history through film, photography, and archival research, I discovered that my ancestors were forced to serve the confederacy as slaves during the Civil War.” Burrell explores the traumas and joys in our familial histories and gives witness to contemporary Black life in the United States. Through The Saints Step in Kongo Time he aims to reinterpret and archive the oral and written history of his own family and to serve as a model for other Black Americans from similar backgrounds.

This presentation at Untitled Art is concurrent to Burrell’s solo exhibition Sugarcane and Lightning Pt.3 currently on display at the ICA San Jose through February 26, 2023.

About the Artist:

Adrian L. Burrell (b. 1990, Oakland) is an artist employing photography, film, and site-specific installation to examine issues of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics. His work focuses on notions of kinship, diasporic narratives, and the gaps between place and belonging. Burrell’s multimedia projects draw deeply on his own family’s history, combining interviews, video, and archival materials to trace a multigenerational journey from Senegal to Louisiana to Oakland.

His photographic series It’s the End of the World, Don’t You Know That Yet? debuted at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 2021, exploring themes of legacy and family with personal, incisive stories of Bay Area life. Surveying lineages of revolt against racial oppression, Burrell’s work is a call to action, drawing upon his own experience with police brutality and interrogating how we confront our past and build our future. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Burrell has lived and worked on four continents and served as a volunteer educator in San Francisco, teaching film to youth in detention.

Burrell has exhibited in spaces as varied as the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, Photoville in New York City, and at SFMOMA, where his work was acquired for the permanent collection. His work and films have been presented around the world in varied publications and venues from The New Yorker to Pop Up Magazine. Burrell earned a BFA in film from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History, where he served as the Black Graduate Student Community Outreach Chair. His solo exhibition Sugarcane and Lightning Pt.3 is currently on display at the ICA San Jose. Burrell has just finished a residency in Dakar at Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal.

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