Artist and illustrator Rashad Malik Davis gives a talk Monday, June 30, at 7 p.m. at an opening reception for “Celestial Bodies: Black Queer Identity in Precolonial Africa.” The exhibit will be on view in the Reading Room from June 30 through August 18.
“Celestial Bodies” features a collection of five 24-by-36-inch acrylic paintings on canvas that represent real-life figures and deities from indigenous African spiritual systems. It also includes four masks cut out of wooden panel board, each measuring roughly 20 inches high and 8 inches wide.
The exhibit “seeks to understand how Africans of various cultures and ethnic groups not only viewed but celebrated individuals and narratives that we would recognize today as within the LGBTQIA+ realm,” the artist said.
As the library’s Maker in Residence this summer, Davis will also lead a series of workshops where rising sixth- through ninth-graders will create large, moving, fantasy creatures out of cardboard. Workshops will be Tuesday through Thursday, August 12 through 14, at 1 p.m. in the Community Room. Registration is required and opens Saturday, July 26.
Also this summer, the Davis will create art and interact with visitors in the main lobby of the library on two dates in August to be announced.
“I’m so excited to share my first large scale exhibition with the Princeton Public Library and its community at large,” Davis said. “And I especially look forward to my workshop creating fantastical creatures and mythological beasts with young artists, too!”
Davis is the illustrator of the best-selling children’s book “Sunne’s Gift” His self-published work, “Carefree, Like Me!: Chapter 1 – Root the Brave,” won the 2017 Best Indie Book Award in the Children’s Category, and his second book, “Carefree, Like Me! Chapter 2: Sacra the Joyous”, followed in 2018. The seven-part series has themes of cultural diversity and inclusion, fantasy, empathy and emotional literacy throughout, and is inspired by his own life experiences with his real-life best friend, his connection to his spirituality, and his love of adventure tales.
Celestial Bodies, Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, Princeton. Artist talk and opening reception Monday, June 30, 7 p.m. www.princetonlibrary.org
