ACA Galleries is pleased to present We the people, an exhibition featuring mixed media, fiber, and stained glass works by multimedia Afro-Caribbean American portrait artist Kandy G Lopez and trailblazing visual artist Aminah Robinson. This intergenerational exhibition will feature a kaleidoscopic selection of over twenty works exploring the power and potential of honoring community through artistic representation.

Lopez and Robinson’s practices are both communally minded and deeply intimate, inspired by their relationships with individuals in their communities. By threading connections between material and personal histories, their work explores cultural narratives, shared histories, and psychological experiences, using mediums and materials including weaving, found objects, button and needle work, stained glass, and illustration.

As the title of the exhibition suggests, the artists’ works on view demonstrate their commitment to correcting the lack of representation across historical canons, pairing art with narrative storytelling that speaks to both individual and collective experiences. For seven decades, Aminah Robinson created artworks that told the story of the Black experience. She described her multivalent practice as “filling in the blank pages of American history”. Her works in We the people portray scenes of gathering, protest, and the mobilization of shared voices, particularly resonant in today’s tumultuous political landscape.

Similarly, Kandy G Lopez’s striking portraits—accompanied in the show by texts showcasing the subjects’ personal narratives—spark dialogue surrounding the complexities of identity, colorism, and prejudice in America and the Caribbean. This is the first showing of the artist’s stained glass portraits, representing a new sphere of her multimedia artistic practice.

This is the first time Robinson and Lopez’s works will be juxtaposed in a gallery exhibition, following the gallery’s 2023 Armory Show presentation Women in fiber: Kandy G Lopez, Dindga McCannon, Faith Ringgold, Aminah Robinson, and June Wayne, which spotlighted female artists working in fiber.

As an Afro-Caribbean visual artist, Kandy G Lopez (b. 1987) is eager to be challenged materialistically and metaphorically when representing marginalized individuals that inspire and move her. Her works are created out of the necessity to learn something new about her people and culture. Lopez is interested in developing a nostalgic dialogue between the artwork and the viewer.

Aminah Robinson (b. 1940-2015) was an instrument of memory, gathering stories, totems and fragments of the past to bring into the present and pass on to the future. Her art grew from her belief in the African concept of Sankofa, an understanding of the past so that we can learn from its richness, joys and mistakes. The materials for her drawings, paintings, sculptures and artist books are the materials of memory, often her own but also of others. As these materials passed through Aminah Robinson’s hands, they recombined into an art of extraordinary power.