Five Pittsburgh art exhibitions worth your attention
As the region’s primary arts service organization, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council provides advocacy, professional resources, research, and grantmaking to artists and nonprofit organizations throughout Western Pennsylvania. The staff is also personally committed to amplifying the work of the artists it serves. Here are five Pittsburgh art exhibitions we recently attended that we believe are worthy of your attention.
Here Gallery
Ester Petukhova: If and When You Find Me
527 N. Taylor Ave., North Side
Through Aug. 12, 2023
Curated by Sean Beauford, the exhibition is comprised of a body of work exploring post-Soviet identity in a digital age that still finds itself deeply rooted in censorship. The works represent an assortment of distinct, yet interconnected references spanning timelines, borders, and generations.
Concept Art Gallery
Picture a Free World: Annual Let’s Get Free Art Show and Auction
1031 S. Braddock Ave., Swissvale
Through July 29, 2023
This exhibition, curated by etta cetera, is raising awareness about mass incarceration while serving as a fundraiser for Let’s Get Free: The Women and Trans Prison Defense Committee, a local prison advocacy group focused on those facing life in prison without parole. The exhibition features nearly 200 works of art created by 60 artists who are incarcerated and 30 artists who are allies to the cause. Together, the works consider the question, “What is a free world for you, and for others?”
Mattress Factory
Asim Waqif’s Assume the Risk
509 Jacksonia St., North Side
Through September 2024
Asim Waqif studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, and has worked in sculpture, site-specific public installation, video, photography, and, more recently, with large-scale interactive installations that combine traditional and new media technologies. Asim’s newest exhibition at the Mattress Factory invites viewers into a collaborative dynamic and playful installation that challenges our ideas on authorship and the preciousness of artwork, pushing against the formality we come to expect from typical museum experiences. The work responds not only to the environment that it exists in, but also to the materials sourced. Items have been assembled in a sprawling sculptural composition. Microphones and speakers have been strategically placed throughout, so that the room itself hums and buzzes, activated, and changed with the movements and participation of each visitor.
Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District
Architects of Air: Daedalum
Backyard at Eighth and Penn Avenue, Downtown
Through Sept. 4, 2023
Daedalum is a temporary immersive experience that can be found in Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, guests are transported into another world when they enter into a colorful labyrinth of winding tunnels, enchanting pods, and captivating domes. The exhibit is one of several touring luminaria created by Architects of Air, a UK-based company founded by Alan Parkinson. Daedalum is approximately half the size of a US football field and consists of 17 egg-shaped domes.
Radiant Hall
Kathy Mazur’s Sounds of Silence
734 Thompson Ave., McKees Rocks
Through July 21, 2023
Kathy Mazur’s latest exhibition features paintings that are a departure from the flowers, trees, and cityscapes she typically depicts and are instead rooted in a subject that is deeply personal to her, American Sign Language. Kathy’s interest in ASL started at a young age as a result of her childhood neighbor being deaf. She continued to study and learn ASL throughout her life in hopes of bridging common gaps. As an adult, her interest in ASL deepened as a result of her cousin having two children who are deaf. The paintings that Kathy created for this exhibition, which were supported by an Allegheny Arts Revival Grant she received in 2022 through the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, are abstract, with gestural shapes being formed by signing specific words. As a painter, Kathy believes heavily in visual language and sought to find a way to converge two dimensional paintings with three dimensional communicative movements.