June 11 - July 10, 2016

queer home sweet home

tony whitfield

opening reception: saturday, june 11, 6-8pm

“To be young, gifted and black, is where it’s at!” were the closing lines to Nina Simone’s 1970 anthem, but something always made precocious 16 year old artist, Tony Whitfield, uncomfortable about that statement because he was young, gifted, black and gay and it had been made very clear to him that, in his parents home, that was not okay.

QUEER HOME SWEET HOME is Whitfield’s meditation on what it meant to be who he was growing up and how his relationship to the experience of home life influenced his experience of the rest of the world.  In this Plus/Space installation at FiveMyles the artist brings together a series of autobiographical works with his video collaboration with artists Hanisha Haranji and Paul Isham, expanding the mediation to include other queer folks’ experiences of places called “home.”QUEER HOME SWEET HOME is a project of Whitfield CoLabs which creates contexts that present and interpret aspects of urban experience that illuminate social change. QUEER HOME SWEET HOME was funded in part by a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council’s Local Arts Grants Program. Fiscal sponsorship for Whitfield CoLabs is provided by Fractured Atlas.

GALLERY HOURS:

Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6pm, or by appointment. Please email hanne@fivemyles.org, or call 718-783-4438.

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Laurie Cumbo,  The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Perlemeter Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.