Opening Reception - Saturday, April 12, 2008 from 6:30 to 9:00 pm

Gallery Hours - 11am to 6pm Wednesday through Saturday

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AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) was originally derived from the combination of ‘Afri’ with COBRA (Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists). The group was started at the site of the Wall of Respect near 43rd Street in Chicago’s South Side. Their aim was to provide a visual element to the Black Cultural Revolution and to provide a venue for black artists to show their work. Promoting a black aesthetic that tied together elements of [Transafricanism] (a term coined by artist Jeff Donaldson), which sought to use African aesthetics and subject matter that referred to the political struggles in Africa and the African Diaspora and innovative expressions of rhythm, the sublime image and vibrating color.

Painter and photographer, Adger Cowans has established a successful career as a still photographer for the Hollywood film industry in the mid-1960s. He also worked with Life Magazine photographer Gordon Parks and fashion photographer Henri Clarke. He has had major exhibitions at the Firenze Biennale in Italy, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. His commissions include IBM, Lenox Hill Hospital and the Arco Corporation in Philadelphia. His paintings and photographs are included in the collections of Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, the late Mr. and Mrs. Romare Bearden, Schomburg Center, the Studio Museum of Harlem and Howard University.

Michael Harris work revolves around his emotional and political consciousness. He is an artist who uses media as language, the materials used depends on the intended meaning and together they can create a poetic dialogue. Harris states, “I’m currently exploring photo fragments manipulated and accompanied by text to raise questions about some of the problematic ways black people have described, addressed, and confronted each other. I am searching for a cultural language that transcends race but is rooted in culture.” His work has been shown extensively through the U.S. in institutions such as the North Carolina Museum of Art, Smithsonian Anacostia Museum, Denver Art Museum, Orlando Museum of Art and most recently the Hampton University Museum in the show entitled “AfriCobra: Contemporary American Works Rooted in Africa.”

Painter James Phillips is product of the Weusi Ya Naa Academy of Fine Arts. Through the influence of Ademola and other contemporary African artists and 20th Century African American artists he developed his own personal style of painting. He incorporated African patterns and designs throughout his compositions which included fore ground and background to look like on design. In 1973 he became member of AfriCobra, because some of the members were using similar patterns and motifs that he was using, that evolved into what young writers and art historians are calling the AfriCobra style or tradition.
Phillips has shown nationally with exhibitions at Hampton University Museum in Hampton VA, Smithsonian Museum and Howard University in Washington DC, and Cornell University in New York. He has created murals at the Philadelphia International Airport, the Criminal Court Building in Philadelphia, Cal Train in San Francisco, and Cramton Auditorium at Howard University in Washington DC. He is highly collected by individuals through out the nation.