Artist and scholar exhibits and lectures about the power of love

The Bates College Office of Multicultural Affairs presents LOVE, an exhibition, lecture and reception featuring Arturo Lindsay, professor of art and art history at Atlanta’s Spelman College. Lindsay gives his talk at 4 p.m. Friday, March 21, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave. The exhibition, curated by Nakeisha Gumbs, Bates class of 2007, opens at 7 p.m. in Chase Hall Gallery, followed by a reception. The public is invited to attend all three events at no charge. The exhibition will be on display from March 21 to April 5 between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. For more information, please call the Multicultural Center at 207-786-8376.

Lindsay is an artist-scholar who conducts ethnographic research into reflections of  African spiritual and aesthetic traditions in contemporary Latin American cultures. Lindsay received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest International Artist Award to establish a studio in Portobelo, a 16th-century Spanish colonial village in Panama, in order to research influences from the history and traditions of the Congos.  The Congos, writes Lindsay, “are descendants of Africans who liberated themselves from bondage through a series of wars fought against the Spanish crown during the colonial period in Panama.” The Lila Wallace residency resulted in a major solo exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Panama City.

In 1996 Lindsay co-founded Taller Portobelo, an artists’ cooperative dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Congos. In 1997, he developed the Spelman College Summer Art Colony to provide college students and emerging artists an opportunity to live and work in the village of Portobelo each summer, and the Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence Program that brings Congo artists to Atlanta annually to produce Congo art workshops.

LOVE is the final installment in a series of three solo exhibitions in which Lindsay explores both personal and collective emotional experiences. LOVE examines the power of art to enhance the experience of love. As a Panamanian raised in Brooklyn, Lindsay brings a unique perspective of his dual identity to his work. As a self-identified mestizo, an individual of mixed racial and cultural ancestry, he blends his rich cultural experiences into works of art.

Nakeisha Gumbs, received her bachelor’s degree from Bates in African American studies and art and visual culture. A native New Yorker, she returned home after completing a post-undergraduate research program with University of California, Los Angelos’ Ralph E. Bunche Center, where she researched pedagogy of black arts as a form of social-justice education. Gumbs then accepted an internship at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, where she now holds the positions of director of membership and events coordinator.

A practicing visual artist in painting and mixed media, her interests lie in examining black aesthetics in theory and practice. This is her first curated exhibit.