A Layered Presence/Una Presencia Estratificada
From now through September 8, this colorful, eye-popping new exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art shows there is more to translation than mere language.
Works by 22 Kansas City artists with a connection to Latin America explore many layers of identity and culture—family, gender, place, time, history, myth—that are both personal to each artist and yet universal for us all.
The intimate, spare gallery setting lets the vibrant paintings and sculptures jump off the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
What catches your eye is the giant steel and copper spider La Muerte y la vida suspended from the ceiling, the work of Rodrigo S. Alvarez.
La Adelita, an acrylic on Masonite painting by Adolfo Gustavo Martinez, is set during the 1910 Mexican Revolution and shows an anxious woman, surrounded by ghostly comrades, waiting at the train station. Eulalia C. Pulido captures the spirit of her family home in Armourdale in the acrylic on canvas and mixed media Tony’s Dream.
Chico Salvador Sierra mines the deep and complicated symbolic imagery of his family’s pre-Columbian background in Mama Gave Me Soul. Hugo Ximello-Salido explores the unique concept of gender fluidity from Muxe in his native Oaxaca.
Kansas City Ballet Presents: Second Company
Kansas City Ballet’s Second Company performs on Saturday, March 9 at Lenexa City Center at 6:30 p.m. These classically trained dancers on the cusp of their professional careers perform in an intimate setting as a prelude to their roles in the First Company. And the audience gets an up-close-and-personal look at Kansas City Ballet’s emerging talent.
With both classical and cutting-edge choreography, the Second Company will dazzle. This is a chance to introduce your friends and family to the athleticism and language of ballet, from arabesque to pas de deux.
Second Company performs throughout the region, enabling the public to view live dance in a public setting.
The performance is free to the public.
To Prove That I Exist Melissa Shook’s Daily Self-Portraits
Before there were selfies, photographer Melissa Shook (1939-2020) began taking almost daily self-portraits. These series of photos taken in 1972 and 1973 were a very personal project that became the start of her career.
She started with a Rollei 35 camera, a self-timer, Tri-X film, a tripod, and only the available light.
“When I look at these photographs,” she wrote, “I see a young woman, trapped in a body too attractive for her to manage, much less enjoy, who was battling depression and struggling like the devil not to reveal the pain she was in. I was an unmarried mother, sole supporter of her daughter, with no skills other than typing and shorthand. Within a year, I would learn that I was capable of teaching photography.”
Today, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is the only art museum in the country to have a full set, which will be on exhibit from March 9 through August 4.
You can see more of her on her website.
Let’s Tango! House Concert at The Kansas City Museum
On Sunday afternoon, March 17, Beau Bledsoe will strum his guitar and Christine Grossman will play her viola to take us away to southern climes and exotic locales. The program at the Kansas City Museum will vary between Argentinian tango music, cutting a sharp swathe in tempo and mood, with the more melodic and lyrical bolero, a style of love song from Spain which rose to popularity in 19th-century Cuba.
Beau Bledsoe performs classical, jazz, and folkloric music to diverse audiences. He is the founder and current artistic director of Ensemble Iberico, which celebrates the music of Portugal, Spain, and outlying areas of the Iberian diaspora.
Christine Grossman trained at Juilliard and was the principal violinist at the Kansas City Symphony from 2008 to 2019, where she performed many solos. She is an avid chamber musician.