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Malcolm X and The Arts
May 30 @ 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Join us for the seventh installment in our series commemorating the 100th birthday of Malcolm X—activist, orator, and enduring symbol of Black liberation. Malcolm X and the Arts features a presentation by artists Imar Hutchins and Zoma Walace!
About Malcolm X
Malcolm X was a minister, civil rights activist, and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960. A naturally gifted orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism “by any means necessary,” including violence. The fiery civil rights leader broke with the Nation of Islam shortly before his assassination in 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech. He was 39 years old.
About Imar
Imar Lyman [Hutchins] is a collagist and printmaker based in Washington, DC. Most recently he has been extending his practice into glasswork.
This year he was honored to create his first major work in glass—entitled Sunbursts Appear in Dark Disguises—for the lobby of the newly-constructed Cedar Hill Hospital in Ward 8, Washington, DC.
Imar’s other recent projects include: his pop-up exhibition and panel, “Decolonizing Printmaking” at Esceula de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico); a benefit print he created for Millennium Arts Salon (Washington, DC) in honor of the legendary, 94-year-old artist, E.J. Montgomery; and the unveiling of two of his portraits at the University of Birmingham (England, United Kingdom) in honor of the 75 th Anniversary
of the Windrush (Caribbean mass migration to the UK).
Other recent activities include a public discussion with master printmaker Curlee Raven Holton; Imar’s Zero Dollar Bill exhibition at IA&A Hillyer; and his Inheritance exhibition at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (Hyattsville, MD) and at the Muhammad Ali Center (Louisville,
KY).
Imar’s work can be found in numerous notable public and private collections.
About Zoma
Zoma Wallace is an artist and independent curator raising a family in her hometown of Washington, D.C. For the past 20 years, Zoma has charted a unique path as a creative, earning respect and recognition for her aesthetic instincts, adventurous ideas, and thoughtful critical insights. Many in the D.C. arts community know her from a decade of public service as the curator for the DC Commission of the Arts & Humanities, where she changed the municipal art landscape entirely; expanding the agency’s art collection with diverse contemporary acquisitions, instituting a gallery exhibition program, and creating a new grant to fund emerging D.C. curators in realizing compelling exhibition concepts. Zoma holds a BA from Spelman College, an MFA from Howard University, and is a PhD candidate in Art Theory, Aesthetics, & Philosophy at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA).
