Artful Weekend April 16-17 – The Art League

Welcome to Artful Weekend, our guide to fun and interesting ways to enjoy art in person or virtually.

This weekend: Screen Dream and Life is Fragile: Handle With Care at the League; Lizette Chirrime’s fiber art at Morton Fine Art; Julia Kwon’s interpretive bojagi at VisArts; and contemporary art from the UAE at MEI.

Screen Dream

Lights! Camera! Action! Screen Dream, our April themed exhibit, takes its cue from the big and small screen. Member artists created works—drawings, paintings, glass, mixed media, sculpture, and photography–—inspired by the stories, images, writers, actors, directors, and musical scores from popular movies and television.

In the spirit of the exhibit’s theme, film and television actor Xander Berkeley served as juror. He is known for roles in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Air Force One movies, and more recently primetime series The Mentalist and 24. Along with those credentials, Berkeley is also an accomplished painter and sculptor.

Screen Dream is on view through May 1.

Life is Fragile: Handle With Care by Amy Browning-Dill

In this exhibit, mixed media artist Amy Browning-Dill seeks to explore the ways in which human beings are connected to ecology: how we pollute the earth, destroy it, and how this destruction ultimately affects us. As she considers humans to be part of this natural world, she aims to not only show how we are wrecking havoc on non-sentient life, but to explore how humanity itself suffers from our wantonness. Life is Fragile: Handle With Care is on view through May 1.

Join us for an in-person opening reception celebrating the April member exhibit, and April solo artist Amy Browning-Dill. Five-minute artist talks with award winners and our solo artist will be hosted from (approximately) 4:30 to 5:30 pm. RSVP here.

Lizette Chirrime: Rituals for Souls Search

Working primarily with recycled materials, Mozambican artist Lizette Chirrime’s practice has a marked foundation in personal and traditional spirituality. She describes her creative process as “a prayer to the Universe”–an intention to heal the earth from overconsumption, pollution and greed. In Rituals for Souls Search, her solo exhibition of multimedia textile works at Morton Fine Art,  Chirrime presents an array of collaged pieces that foreground her relationship to self and home, while blending abstract, symbolic and figurative imagery as a means to analyze the largely unseen forces that guide and determine our realities. It is on view through May 22, 52 O Street NW, #302; or view artworks online here.

Julia Kwon: Never Mere Ornament

Artist Julia Kwon sews interpretative bojagi—Korean object-wrapping cloths historically created since the early Joseon Dynasty—and wrap hollow human-scaled figures with them to comment on the objectification of Asiatic female bodies. Never Mere Ornament, her exhibit in 355 POD Space Gallery at VisArts, is inspired by her own experience of being seen as “the other.” She aims to capture the tension that arises from the divide between different social groups and the mindset of “us versus them.” On view through April 30, 155 Gibbs Street, Rockville, MD.

Between the Sky and the Earth: Contemporary Art from the UAE

Marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates, Between the Sky and the Earth: Contemporary Art from the UAE, at the MEI Art Gallery, brings together 12 artists reflecting the diverse contemporary art ecosystem in the UAE today. With roots in the Gulf, the Levant, Southeast Asia, and the United States, the artists—all of whom now call the UAE home—challenge standard narratives about the Emirates through an intergenerational dialogue exploring their social, cultural, and natural landscapes. View this exhibit in-person on through April 29; 1763 N Street, NW.; or see artworks online here.

Enjoy the weekend!