Editor’s Pick: The Outwin 2022 at The National Portrait Gallery
metroweekly.comAnthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning, a “marquetry hybrid” mixed-media image paying tribute to a hairstylist in the artist’s Brooklyn neighborhood who set up shop on the street as a Black Lives Matter-inspired fundraiser for organizations advocating for social justice.The Outwin 2022 Second Prize went to Elizah Leonard, a multilayered portrait by Native-American artist Tom Jones of a champion female dancer/wrestler embellished with culturally significant beads, rhinestones, and shells sewed directly onto the print.Third Prize went to untitled (man), Laotian-American photographer Pao Houa Her’s black-and-white image of a senior citizen who originally emigrated to the U.S.
as a Hmong refugee decades ago, seen positioned in front of a printed studio backdrop alongside fake plants.An additional four mixed-media works earned a Commended, or honorable mention, designation, including Killed Negative #13/After Arthur Rothstein by Joel Daniel Phillips with Quraysh Ali Lansana, Stuart Robertson’s Self-Portrait of the Artist, People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) by Vincent Valdez, and Milk by Elsa María Meléndez.At least nine of the remaining 35 artworks have some degree of LGBTQ relevance by virtue of either the artist or the artistic content, including:Dad, at Manmade Pond, a poignant triptych by gay photographer David Hilliard depicting the casket-shaped urn containing the cremains of his father, a victim of COVID-19.Shira and Sarah, a portrait by Jess T.
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