Kat Chamberlin & Tariku Shiferaw

Beverly’s is excited to show this two person exhibition by artists Kat Chamberlin and Tariku Shiferaw. Chamberlin and Shiferaw both employ rigid geometries to create space for histories that have been overlooked or under appreciated. Through painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, and video - these artists’ various works comment on aspects of their cultures that, when celebrated, are simultaneously uplifted and trivialized. Shiferaw titles many of his works after music created by African Diasporas, such as Hip Hop, Jazz, and Blues. He segments the message and syncopation into systematic painted lines, shapes, and architectural responses that comment on power and censorship. Chamberlin’s multimedia works demonstrate acute technical and formal craft, as she dissects societal competition - referencing sports and niche activities/communities such as youth cheerleading. Shiferaw was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in Los Angeles. Chamberlin was born in the Netherlands and raised in Turkey. They both now live and work in New York.

Although aesthetically and materially different, both Shiferaw’s and Chamberlin’s works pay homage to rhythms and choreographed labor as forms of protest. These ideas, in combination with their complex experiences of home, of belonging and not belonging, frame their insights into structures and cultural practices that slyly shift to both exclude and welcome them.

Kat Chamberlin (Armenian/Swedish) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work responds to her experience of cultural multiplicity and conflict. Chamberlin’s work explores tribal frictions, abstractions as coping mechanisms, and our dependence on fragility. Her works have been exhibited across the U.S. and internationally, and featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Chicago Cultural Center, Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery in Boston and Gana Art in New York City. Kat completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the Toby Devan Lewis Award and the William Dole Award.

Tariku Shiferaw (Ethiopia/United States) creates a body of work titled, ‘One Of These Black Boys,’ that explores mark-making through painting in order to address the physical and metaphysical spaces of societal structures. Shiferaw calls upon the act of physical marking as a perfomative utterance of one’s existence - altering the immediate physical space and introducing new ideas and boundaries. His work draws on cultural instruments of resistance against a system that tries to silence and erase Black bodies. Shiferaw received his BFA from The University of Southern California, and his MFA from The Parsons The New School for Design. Recent exhibitions include the 2017 Whitney Biennial as part of Occupy Museum’s Debtfair project, a group exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and solo exhibitions at Addis Fine Art’s project space in London, and at Cathouse Proper in Brooklyn. His work has been featured on Hyperallergic, Washington Post, and Art In America. Shiferaw is currently an artist in residence of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program.