Supporting women and feminist expressions. 

Now + There is pleased to present Thrive, a co-curated exhibition at The Beehive, Boston, MA now through October 18, 2017 in celebration of the restaurant's 10th anniversary.

The eighteen paintings, photographs, and sculptures in Thrive champion feminist expressions in their subject matter and represent artists who are fiercely committed to non-traditional, collaborative artistic practices.

The eight artists in this all-female exhibition were chosen for the mastery of their craft, their stunning aesthetic, and their convictions. The works in this exhibition explore the power of female resilience and creativity—whether they are supporting incarcerated women, drawing attention to our impact on the environment, or lifting up the voices of underrepresented women. The exhibition artists support the production of knowledge that refuses to be reproduced in the dominant white cultural structure. Their work promotes social change and a world in which we can all thrive.

Thrive artists include Ann Lewis, Rania Matar, Maria Molteni, Chanel Thervil, Silvia López Chavez, Elisa H. Hamilton, Evelyn Rydz, and the Safarani Sisters (Farzaneh and Bahareh Safarani).

Thrive was co-curated by Jennifer Epstein and Kate Gilbert, founder and director of Now + There, and is part of Now + There’s Year of the Woman programming. The exhibition takes its name from one of the works in the exhibition, a word hidden in Ann Lewis’ collage “Objects of a Dehumanized World”.  

Proceeds from works sold during Thrive will be split between the artists and
Now + There to support future public artworks in Boston.

>> SEE THE EXHIBITION: The beehive, 541 Tremont St, Boston

>> READ THE Press release 

Cover image: detail of "Shannon, Boston Massachusetts, 2010"  by Rania Matar; courtesy of Carroll and Sons.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ann Lewis is a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, and participatory performance to explore themes related to American identity, power structures, and justice. She often creates these works in the public space. In early 2014 the artist garnered national media attention when she installed an oversized police tape banner that read ‘GENTRIFICATION IN PROGRESS’ at the former graffiti mecca 5 Pointz in Queens, New York. Her work was exhibited in the White House in the fall of 2015 during the Obama Administration's reflection on mass incarceration. In early 2017 her work was acquired by the New York Historical Society Museum. Most recently she has been named a 2017-18 Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute Residency for Equal Justice. Since receiving her bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, her art has been reviewed in Blouin Art Info, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Street Art, Huffington Post, Le Monde, and The New York Times. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and abroad including shows at Petzel Gallery in New York, Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and Truth to Power during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She has lectured at PACE University as well as CAA, and is a teaching artist with the Young New Yorkers. Through community organizing, participatory performance events, murals, uncommissioned street work, gallery installations, and curatorial projects she continues her dialog of mindful and social evolution. www.annlew.is

Born and raised in Lebanon, Rania Matar moved to the U.S. in 1984. Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, she now works full time on her personal photography projects and teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work focuses on women and girls in the U.S and in the Middle East, with an emphasis on identity and universality.

Matar’s work has been widely exhibited, most recently at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Harn Museum of Art, Howard Greenberg Gallery, The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Tufts University Art Gallery, East Wing Gallery Dubai, Galerie Janine Rubeiz Beirut, Galerie Eulenspiegel Basel, Lehmbruck Museum in Germany, Sharjah Art Museum, and The National Portrait Gallery in London.

Matar has received several grants and awards including a 2017 Mellon Foundation an artist-inresidency grant at The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, a 2011 Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 2011 and 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowships, first
place at the New England Photographers Biennial and Women in Photography International. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition. Her work was recently selected as one of the 10 Remarkable
Photographers to Discover at This Year’s AIPAD Fair.

A mid-career retrospective of Matar’s work will be exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in a solo exhibition In Her Image, December 2017 – May 2018.

Matar’s images are in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private
collections worldwide.

She has published three books:
L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009 www.raniamatar.com

Maria Molteni is a Nashville-to-Boston-based multimedia & performing artist, educator & organizer. Having studied Painting and Printmaking at Boston University, her practice sprung from formalist roots, and has grown to incorporate research, social engagement, and transdisciplinary experimentation. She playfully asks audiences to imagine her serving Black Mountain College as their PE coach... From fiber to found-object sculpture, textile to movement, performance to publication, she employs processes per their ability to manifest elaborate conceptual orchestration and formal satisfaction. Exploring iterations of sport, craft, feminism, spiritualism, animism, utopia, glossolalia and urban planning, she takes interest in standardized shapes and systems that influence our experience of spirituality through everyday functionality. Embellishing psychic energy in her environments, she seeks to expose unseen presences or predicaments, both cosmic and practical. Whether trapping such forces in wind-powered inflatables or posing a basketball net as a hoop’s phantom limb, she enjoys problem solving via traditional methods of craft- the tactile and tactical. Her works introduce original or absurdist processes as applied aesthetic solutions. In 2010 She launched the international collective New Craft Artists in Action. She co-founded the participatory project Festooning the Inflatable Beehive after working with beekeepers from across the country, including Treatment Free Apiculturalists Golden Rule.

Since living on the East Coast and traveling to the Philippines, she has also developed a passion for the sea, its mysterious ecosystems, and island lore. She has addressed her relationship to feminist and queer identities via Mermaids, Anglerfish, Moon Jellies and other nautical “species” in collaborative performances such as They Were Sunbeams..., Aurelian Baptism and There Are Plenty of Single Ladies in the Sea. She currently lives and works on the Boston Harbor in Midway Artist Studios and enjoys her membership of the Boston Rowing Center on her neighborhood's Fort Point Channel. www.maria-molteni.squarespace.com

Chanel Thervil is a Haitian American artist and educator obsessed with contemporary art, pop culture, and corny jokes. Upon roaming the halls of NYC museums as a teen, she often found herself wondering why she felt so out of place. Fueled by her lack of satisfaction with the narrow range of representations of people of color on both sides of the canvas, Chanel decided to pursue a career in art. Her love for talking about art, doing research and dragging loved ones to museums that they would never walk into otherwise led her to completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at Pace University and a Master's Degree in Art Education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

In addition to her work with sparc! the ArtMobile, she currently serves as the Program Manager at The Art Connection.   www.chanelthervil.com

With roots in the Dominican Republic,
Silvia López Chavez  is an interdisciplinary artist who has based her art practice in the Boston area for over fifteen years. Her work investigates the basic human need to connect with each other on multiple levels: socially, politically and culturally. She explores the intellectual and emotional narratives of joy, struggle, acceptance and assimilation as well as the change and growth that affect daily life. She is motivated by the power of the creative process as an agent for positive change.

Her work is informed by her own personal narratives and responds to her identities as an immigrant woman of color, an educator, a visual artist and a designer. She holds a BFA in Illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and has exhibited her work in solo and group shows including the Fitchburg Art Museum, Boston Children's Museum, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Bakalar, Mills, Grossman, and Towne galleries.

In addition to her fine art practice, she is an award-winning design professional, working for over 13 years with high-profile companies and institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. www.silvialopezchavez.com

Elisa H. Hamilton is a multimedia artist whose practice focuses on the creation of inclusive artworks that emphasize shared experiences and the inherent joy of our everyday places, objects, and experiences. A New England native, she is a proud graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she earned her BFA in Painting in 2007 and now serves on the Board of Trustees. Her work has been shown locally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Her ongoing project Dance Spot has engaged with a variety of communities all around Boston, as well as at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Hamilton is currently planning a project with Now + There and Hubweek entitled Slideshow.

Hamilton has been the recipient of four public art grants to create temporary public works in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood, and a Creative City grant from New England Foundation for the Arts. She has held artist residencies with Vermont Studio Center, Boston Center for the Arts, the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, and the Fenway Alliance. Ms. Hamilton was the creating artist of Sound Lab, a special community sound project that was featured in Listen Hear: The Art of Sound at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. She continues her practice at her South End studio at Boston Center for the Arts. www.elisahhamilton.com

Over the last decade, Boston based artist Evelyn Rydz has focused her work on contemporary coastlines and ways our everyday lives impact and are impacted by changing oceans. Raised in Miami, Rydz received an MFA from SMFA at Tufts University and a BFA from Florida State University. A selection of recent and upcoming exhibitions include Plastic Entanglements at the Palmer Art Museum, Penn State University; Forever Yours, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Floating Artifacts, a solo exhibition at Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University Art Gallery; GYRE: the Plastic Ocean, a Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition at the Anchorage Museum, Alaska, USC Fisher Museum, L.A., and CDC Museum, Atlanta; the Foster Prize Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the DeCordova Annual at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; To Extremes: Public Art in a Changing World at Maseeh Hall, MIT; The Pencil of Nature at Julie Saul Gallery, NY; El Parque Cultural del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia; and Drawing Itself at Brattleboro Museum, Vermont. Rydz is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Drawing Fellowship, an SMFA Traveling Fellowship, and a Bruce Dayton Fellowship. Her work is part of numerous collections including the Federal Reserve Bank, Fidelity Investments, Fitchburg Art Museum, and DeCordova Museum of Art. She is currently an Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. www.evelynrydz.com

Born (1990) and raised in Tehran, Iran, the Safarani Sisters, collaborator twin artists, have been painting professionally since the age of thirteen and have held numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout their career. After training under artist Farimah Farhatnia, the sisters attended the University of Tehran, where they studied painting, performance, video, installation, conceptual art and poetry, among other disciplines. They hold their MFA in Studio Arts; a program offered by Northeastern University in conjunction with School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, Massachusetts. www.safaranisisters.com