THE BANG BANG PROJECT BY ARTIST CESAR CONDE



For the artist, see Cesar Conde (artist). Cesar Conde is an American media executive, currently serving as Chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group. In this role, Conde has oversight of NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, including editorial and business operations for the award-winning television and digital properties.

Born: Manila, Philippines, 1963

Cesar Conde 

A product of the Filipino diaspora, Conde landed in Chicago’s west side 40 years ago. He then moved to Seattle and where he participated in Seattle’s first school busing integration program. He resettled in the Windy City 28 years ago.

Conde is a contemporary painter who deals with relevant social issues. He is an artist and activist who believes that art is a powerful tool for social change. He tackles issues across color lines and communities. As an intersectional artist, Conde believes that we can create empathy and with that, we can affect actions for the good of humanity. He studied at Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. He also studied with the French master, Patrick Betaudier in his atelier in southern France and with Ed Hinkley in Chicago.

Angered by the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Conde created “In The Hood – Portraits of African American Professionals Wearing a Hoodie” in collaboration with his friends and other activists who were his subjects for the series placing professionals in a hoodie altering their reality to our racist societies perspective of black bodies. The main theme is “Perception” vs. “Reality”. African American lawyers, doctors, business owners, pilots, Artists were amongst his collaborators who wore a hoodie to re-examine and co-protest with societies biased against black men and women and the disproportionate amount of killings by the police. This series won the first “Paul Collins Diversity Award” in ArtPrize 2014. In November 2014, “The Bang Bang Project” was conceptualized during the protest march on Michigan Ave. after the acquittal of Michael Brown’s killer in Ferguson, Missouri. It focuses on “Racism” and “Police Brutality”. Conde found collaborators to be subjects of these difficult works placing collaborators on the sidewalk as if they were holding on to their last breath, having their dreams deferred. The collaborators in the paintings became the activators for the viewers to re-think our current judicial and policing system. They became ACTIVISTS.

Conde’s current series called “AmeriKKKa – Reflection of a Divided Nation” which echoes the racist narrative of the current Trump regime recording epithets thrown at immigrants, POC’s, marginalized groups, and African-Americans during his campaign to his current white house occupancy.

Conde has exhibited nationally and internationally most recently at Purdue University, The Field Museum, Chicago, Museo de Arte Moderno in Turin, Italy, He is part of the 17th annual juried exhibition at Freeport Art Museum in Freeport, IL. Conde has exhibited in France, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, Germany, and in and around the U.S.A.


Conde came to the states at an early age of 9 in Chicago's west side. The following year, Conde found himself in Seattle and became part of the desegregation program. It was in these early years when Conde experienced racism. Often bullied and picked on for his size, color, and accent, Conde relied on silence and invisibility. His strong black female principal and vice-principal realized the challenges of the few minorities in their middle school, they sent Conde along with other students of color to a "Race Camp" where he would soon be politicized. In "Race Camp", Conde learned about the power of the vote, our voices mattered no matter who we are, the color of our skin, our gender, or where we came from. This week-long session about Racism and it effects ignited Conde's passion for Art for Social Movement. He found his voice as he learned  that "Voices unheard are useless." During college, Conde lived in Sevilla, Spain, and Guadalajara, Mexico. He attended demonstrations against Apartheid and had the privilege to ask the Rev. Demond Tutu a question during a teleconference at the University of Washington.

Prior to becoming a full-time painter, Conde was performing with Pintig Cultural Group, a Filipino American Theatre Company based in Chicago where they tackled issues on immigration, identity, and the diaspora. He served briefly as the executive director of the company and has performed with Rasaka Theater Company and had done various commercials as well as video and film work. As an out and proud member of the LGBTQ community, Conde is always conscious of the inequity and microaggressions we encounter on a daily basis. Though most of his works have political and social justice undertones, Conde redeems the beauty of humanity. Forever hopeful that we all can get along and that ART can bring us together.

Sowing Seeds of Change Mural Reveal

"Art is Business" Knowledge Wisdom Peace and Love  B’Rael Ali Thunder, www.braelali.com


Great Day and Happy first day of Fall.  Even though we are all just trying to get the year over with there a lot of great things are in store for 2020. 

You're invited to Sowing Seeds of Change Mural Reveal and community uplift Wednesday, September 23rd at 11am @ 601 s California. @ the Westside Justice Center (Rear Alley Entrance)  Please come support the underserved community of the Westside of Chicago we need your strength.  






https://youtu.be/E80Vc8mPn5o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-HK70smLNA

https://www.facebook.com/100006996192519/videos/2744764995766680/?extid=UzpqW9AOAxs7vxdJ


Painter, Poet, Dancer, Curator, Educator

Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice. Teaching Artist

Master of Fine Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2018-2020               



SOULWORKS: A Post Conversation With David Niair

"Art is Business" Pop Up Research Station- BETA "Creative Conversation"

David Niari (Pronounced “Nee-Ai-ree”)




David Niari makes illustrations, paintings, and mixed media artworks. By referencing romanticism, grand-guignolesque black humor, and symbolism, his drawings reference post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.

His drawings demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By choosing mainly formal solutions, he tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations.


His works are often classified as part of the new romantic movement because of the desire for the local in the unfolding globalized world. However, this reference is not intentional, as this kind of art is part of the collective memory. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, he creates work through labor-intensive processes which can be seen explicitly as a personal exorcism ritual. 



They are inspired by a nineteenth-century tradition of works, in which an ideal of ‘Fulfilled Absence’ was seen as the pinnacle.



His works are based on formal associations that open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality are questioned. 
David Niari currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

www.davidniari.com
www.facebook.com/davidniari
www.twitter.com/davidniari
www.twitter.com/davidniari
www.instagram.com/davidniari

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tour, September, 18 2020



You're invited to our Virtual Open Studio 
Drop-in at any time: Bit.ly/bronzevillearttrolleytour
Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85974336882 
 
Topic: Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tour 2020- Phantom Gallery Chi Open Studio
Time: Sep 18, 2020, 07:00 PM Central Time (the US and Canada)
LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events/3168078666607321

PHANTOM GALLERY FEATURED ARTISTS

TALKING ABOUT THEIR ART PRACTICE




TALVER GERMANY





                Talver Germany                                Dress for Freda, Watercolor

A native of Sacramento, California, she was educated like many other artists from grammar to graduate school. Talver received a BA degree in Studio Art, BA in Social Science/ Anthropology, and an MS. Degree in Counseling Education all from the California State University of Sacramento. 
She is an Associate Professor of Art at Folsom Lake College, a member of the Placerville Arts Association, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, Sacramento African American Art Collection, Phantom Gallery Chicago Network on LinkedIn, a member of the California Arts Association, and co-founded the Visual Arts Development Project.




Join us for the After Party 



Michel Delgado- Featured Artist Creative Conversation



 "Art is Business"

Growing up in Senegal, on the west coast of Africa, life and art shared the same space. They were indistinguishable. As a young boy in Dakar, I learned that art is the tool I have for a direct and honest conversation with my own heart. Art always has been my rescuer, my liberator – creatively, emotionally, spiritually. I’m a self-taught painter, able to create in any media, always painting work that is straightforward and personal, work coming from a place within me that is constantly loud and growing.
My work has been called expressive. I fill my canvases with intense and basic colors, crisply painted shapes, and meticulous detail; I make work without conventional representational techniques; my work is free of metaphor, irony, and paradox. I paint straightforward narratives, stories of my journey, and memories of everyday experiences.​

Everything I create and paint comes through my relationship with the world around me, my direct response to my fantasies, my wonder, and my spiritual growth. No journey in my life remains as straightforward as painting.




Bronzeville Renaissance Mural Exhibition

 "Arts is Business" Commissioned by ComEd, Andre and Frances Guichard
Reflecting the history of Bronzeville, in a timeline concept. 
Educating about the richness of the community, 





Gallery Guichard Co-owners,
Art That Touches the Soul
436 E. 47th Street Unit 1
Chicago, IL. 60653
708-772-9315

"Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it." -- Maya Angelou

Phantom Gallery CHI

Pop Up Research Station ask the Question- Why Aren’t There More Black Librarians?

"Art is Business"  Reposted by Alpha Bruton,  WordInBlack.com February 11, 2022 Photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels Why Aren...