Image credit: Mithsuca Berry, from the "Enlightenment" series (detail)

“The Sun Knows No Impostor”

Mithsuca Berry: The Sun Knows No Impostor | Curated by Sienna Kwami

Opening Reception:
November 13, 2021 • 6pm – 8pm

Artists Pop-Up Market with Cocoa & Convo:
“Expanding Models for Sustaining Creative Careers”
December 18, 2021 • 1pm – 6pm
Cocoa & Convo at 4pm

In connection with Mithsuca Berry’s vibrant Mills Gallery exhibition, The Sun Knows No Impostor, we are presenting an Artists Pop-Up Market with unique, affordable, AMAZING items for sale by emerging Boston area artists.

The market will be open from 1-6pm in the Mills gallery, and the vendors–including Mithsuca–will break for an hour at 4pm to engage in a conversation about their ideas on new approaches to supporting a creative career in the age ecommerce.

Along with Mithsuca Berry, the Artists Pop-Up Market features: Anukriti KaushikHibi, Ivory HenryKatiana Rodriguez, Rania Abdalla Kadafour, Sam Le ShaveSumeya Ali, and Villada Michelle.

Please join us, and bring your friends. We’ll have cocoa… ☕

On view:
November 13, 2021-December 19, 2021
Wednesday – Saturday, 1pm – 6pm, and by appointment
BCA Mills Gallery, 551 Tremont St., Boston, MA 02116

Mithsuca Berry: The Sun Knows No Impostor declares a commitment to all the living, without deceit, without fear, and without reservation.[1] The multicolor universe Mithsuca Berry builds during the process of unbinding the rope of their inner pain “to exorcise the demon that resides in each one of us”[2] as Haitian author Frankétienne writes, welcomes everyone to release what diminishes them. Berry is a keen storyteller composing a new narrative with the imperative to expand the collective toolbox for healing at its center.

In their paintings, Black figures adorned with a rainbow of overtones appear as afro-futuristic visions as much as folkloric characters of the past. In their digital illustrations, the ask to turn inward is often directed by hand-drawn text akin to ancient proverbs and fables that instill important life-lessons. Their vulnerability cuts through generations of trauma and empowers their work to give form to the alternative: necessary transformation fundamentally rooted in play, joy, kindness, and compassion.

Berry commits to the task of confronting the complexities of life and exploring the dark, unsavory, and unsettling to retrieve that which is often comfortably hidden from the conscious — held lovingly by the knowledge that the sun knows no impostor.

This is the second exhibition in the new 1:1 Curatorial Initiative series presented in the Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts. Each exhibition in this series presents a collaborative project between one curator and one artist, and either introduces a new artist or highlights a new aspect of a more experienced artist.

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  1. Alice Walker, Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970
  2. Frankétienne, Mûr à Crever,  translated from French by Kaiama L. Glover, Archipelago Books, 2014