Kamal Al Mansour creates mixed-media assemblages that examine social and political issues, especially race in America. Al Mansour’s virtuosic skills in drawing, painting, and collage, combine with his brilliant observations on complex issues to illuminate and provoke: to enlarge the viewer’s understanding of the struggles facing the great majority of us irrespective of color or race in these tempestuous, confusing times. The Black Head series iscomposed of large portraits of African and African-American culture heroes, including the jazz singer, Nina Simone; the Afrobeat musician, Fela Kuti, the rock pioneer, Little Richard; and the poet Maya Angelou. Other works in the show examine the economic rise of China; the Middle Passage route in the American slave trade; citizens’ rights and responsibilities, especially veterans’, under the Patriot Act; America’s prison-industrial complex; and the centralization of wealth in the New World Order, once linked with a post-Cold-War “peace dividend.”
Curated by DeWitt Cheng
Maya ... Still Rising (2012), Mixed-media collage on canvas, 44”x40” by Kamal Al Mansour