Preview: Fall 2018

onView

Explore identity, desire, art history, and the charged relationship between artist and muse in the new exhibition Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me, filling all of our galleries this fall (9/14–12/30). You’ll encounter Thomas’s signature rhinestone-encrusted paintings, videos and installations, and the premiere of a Wex-commissioned project created with Grammy Award–winning drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington.

onStage

Renegade Performance Group and choreographer André M. Zachery present Untamed Space (9/27–30), a fascinating look at African American identity today through the lens of maroon colonies—independent communities established by liberated Africans in the 17th and 18th centuries. The powerful sonic worlds of Iraqi maqam singing and American jazz combine when trumpet star Amir ElSaffar and his Two Rivers Ensemble perform with vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi at Lincoln Theatre (10/10). The team of Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener deliver a spectacular evening of image and movement with Tesseract, a performance fusing experimental cinematography, stunning set design, and hypnotic choreography in real time (11/1). Bessie Award–nominated multidisciplinary artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko interrogates American history, colonialism, and the racialized body in Séancers, an intense, impossible-to-categorize journey into surreal states of the black imagination (12/6–9).

onScreen

Tamer El Said joins us to introduce In the Last Days of the City, his acclaimed feature debut capturing Cairo in the wake of Hosni Mubarak's regime (9/17). The Wex is honored to again serve as a host venue for the citywide comics festival Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, this year featuring presentations by animators Kelly Gallagher, Sally Cruikshank, and more (9/27–28). Unorthodocs, our festival devoted to the creative possibilities of nonfiction filmmaking, returns with a lineup of adventurous documentaries and visiting directors including Yance Ford, Robert Greene, Bing Liu, and Ohio's own Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside (10/25–29). Zoom, Columbus's only annual celebration of family entertainment from around the world, returns with fresh and engaging films for all ages, plus free activities like our morning cereal and pajama party (12/7–8).

inSight

Bring the whole family to explore the work of Mickalene Thomas in our fall Super Sunday featuring free activities led by local artist collective Cinnamon Suites (10/7). This year’s Director’s Dialogue on Art and Social Change invites Columbus native, journalist, and author Wil Haygood along with special guests for a discussion of sports, race, and politics inspired by Haygood’s new work of social history, Tigerland. (10/8)