MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD - RE/DEFINED - Opening at the IAAM, Charleston, SC on June 12, 2025

/ International African American Museum/

On Thursday, June 12th at 6 pm the International African American Museum, (Charleston, SC)  is hosting Blackness re/Defined | An Evening of Art & Conversation (IAAM Community) a special celebration marking the public opening of our newest special exhibition, re/Defined: Creative Expressions of Blackness from the Diaspora. 

This dynamic evening will explore the transformative role of Black artists and cultural producers in shaping identity, resisting systemic erasure, and redefining Blackness across generations and geographies. Through conversation and performance, the IAAM will examine how creative expression serves as both a reflection of lived experience and a powerful assertion of agency within the African Diaspora.

The evening will feature a live jazz performance, a curated dialogue between artists and scholars, and exclusive curator-led exhibition tours with Suzanne DiBella and Isabelle Britto. Curator-led tours will begin at 6:00 pm and 6:30 pm with the Music & Conversation Program beginning at 7:00 pm.

Mark Steven Greenfield, Dessalines, 2022, AcrlYic and Gold Leaf on Wood Panel, 20" X 16"

 

HYPERALLERGIC Names Mark Steven Greenfield a top 10 show to see in October

/ Ronald Silverman Gallery/

Mark Steven Greenfield, “Saartjie Baartman” (2020), gold leaf and acrylic on wood panel, 24 x 24 inches (~61 x 61 cm) (photo by Rob Brander, courtesy William Turner Gallery)

Auras features two bodies of paintings by Mark Steven Greenfield — Black Madonna (2020) and HALO (2022) — that reconsider the breadth of the Black experience in the Americas by excavating and reframing contested histories. HALO comprises portraits of influential Black figures, from the revered to the lesser-known, including Haitian Revolution leader Toussaint Louverture, famed magician Black Herman, and silhouette artist Moses Williams — formerly enslaved by Charles Willson Peale — portrayed as saintly icons surrounded by gold leaf. Black Madonna depicts a beatific ebony Madonna and child, while Ku Klux Klan members and monuments to white supremacy are vanquished and toppled in the background.