Image: Golpes, Carnaval de Pie del Cerro, San Bartolo Tutotepec, Hidalgo, Phyllis Galembo, 2023, Fujiflex print, 50 x 50 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Axis Gallery, NY & NJ.
Albany Institute of History and Art (125 Washington Ave, Albany, NY 12210)
Artist Talk: Phyllis Galembo
Free with museum admission.
Join photographer Phyllis Galembo for an artist talk exploring her decades-long practice documenting ceremonial dress and masquerade traditions in communities throughout Africa and the Americas. Galembo will discuss the travels, encounters, and process behind Mexico Masks / Rituals, offering insight into the people, traditions, and extraordinary artistry represented in the exhibition.
Phyllis Galembo is an American photographer whose remarkable career photographing ritual dress and masquerade from around the globe expresses a phenomenal range of political, artistic, theatrical, social, and religious meanings. She is renowned for her six photographic monographs from Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Galembo’s interest in performative masking can be viewed as a conceptual project with contemporary appeal throughout the art world, as well as in the specialized fields of fashion and textiles, performance, and anthropology, among others.
Phyllis Galembo has had solo exhibitions at the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., the Boca Rotan Museum of Art, Florida, the Tang Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York, among others. In 2013, a series of her photographs was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, curated by Massimilliano Gioni and Cindy Sherman. Her exhibition Dressed for Thrills, organized by The Museum of FIT, toured at the Albany Institute of History and Art in 2004.
Her photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center for Photography (ICP), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University Art Gallery, Library of Congress, and the Albany Institute, among others. Her work has been widely reviewed and published in print and other media. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, received a Senior Fulbright Research Award for her work in Nigeria, and has also received awards from the New York Council for the Arts (NYSCA), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), most recently in 2016. Phyllis Galembo is a Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, State Univ. of New York, department of Art and Art History. She is represented by Axis Gallery, NY & NJ.
