Ahead of the Curve
With its lineup of exhibitions and performances for 2022, the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) continues to create a space for artists to bring engaging, enlightening, and challenging works to Cincinnati and the world.
This Time Tomorrow
The new season at the CAC kicks off with the 2022 edition of This Time Tomorrow from April 6–10. For this annual performance festival, the CAC has commissioned a number of works and includes regional and world premieres from international artists from all over the world, including Radouan Mriziga, Mikrokosmos (Justin Hicks and Steffani Jemison), Alice Ripoll / Cia REC, Jay Bolotin, and others. The festival also features a collaborative commission by Juni One Set, comprised of Senga Nengudi, Eddy Kwon, and Degenerate Art Ensemble co-artistic directors Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl.
The CAC has partnered with The Carnegie, Mercantile Library, Wave Pool Gallery, and 21c Museum Hotel for performances during TTT. With lunchtime presentations, Goetta Institut, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and Late Night Hub shows in the CAC’s Black Box Theater, TTT offers compelling performances all day long.
Among the season’s offerings are a major solo exhibition by Baseera Khan; a spotlight on artist-run spaces throughout Ohio and Northern Kentucky; and the debut of new, genre-spanning commissions by Senga Nengudi, Eddy Kwon, and the Degenerate Art Ensemble; Paul Maheke; Calista Lyon and Carmen Winant; Cameron Granger; and others.
In May, the CAC debuts Breaking Water, a group exhibition bringing together new and recent work exploring the subject of water and themes of liquidity, feminism, and climate justice. In the lobby, the Center of Unfinished Business—a roving reading room and discursive program organized by the publication and editorial collaborative Contemporary And (C&)—will offer a curated selection of books and a series of discussions organized by Dr. Chandra Frank that extends the themes of Breaking Water, using water as a framework for examining African American and African diasporic experiences. Spring at the CAC also includes Artist-Run Spaces, an exhibition highlighting the work of ten artist-run spaces and collectives throughout Ohio and Northern Kentucky, co-organized with Cincinnati-based, community-driven arts organization Wave Pool.
In the fall, the CAC unveils a new lobby installation by Ohio-based artist and filmmaker Cameron Granger and presents a slate of exhibitions as part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial, a month-long celebration of photography, video, and lens-based art held throughout Greater Cincinnati and the surrounding region. These include On The Line: Documents of Risk and Faith, a group exhibition of artists throughout the Americas whose work—primarily in photography, video, and performance—documents the complex and contested relationship humans have with notions of environment, wilderness, nature, and place; Images on which to build, 1970-90, which presents a range of vernacular photographic practices that offer a fuller understanding of LGBTQ and feminist grassroots movements in the 1970s through 1990s; and the first Midwestern solo museum exhibition by New York–based artist Baseera Khan, co-organized by the CAC and the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University.
For more information about the CAC, visit contemporaryartscenter.org.