500X presents the first annual Black Voices exhibition! This year’s show is juried by artist and curator, Ciara Elle Bryant! The exhibiting artists for the show are:

Tiara Unique Francois 
Nitashia Johnson
Elizabeth Hill 
Don Dixon
Aliyah Cydonia
JoMerra Watson
Victoria Simmons
Jamila Mendez
Desireé Vaniecia 
Jessi Jones
Solomon Mahlatini
Molly Sydnor
Charles Gray 
Asia Youngs-Bailey

Black Voices runs from December 5, 2020-January 3, 2021 at 500X Gallery. 500X recently moved to a new location in West Dallas. The address is 516 Fabrication Street. The gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12-5 pm, by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, please visit: http://www.500x.org/schedule-an-appointment

About the juror: Ciara Elle Bryant is a multidisciplinary creative residing in Dallas, Texas. She uses mixed media techniques to discuss the identity of Black culture and how it exists in the new millennium. Bryant also facilitates multiple artist workshops during the year for at-risk youth and practicing artists to demonstrate the constant need for ever-evolving immersion in the arts while creating. Born in Miami Florida, Bryant received her bachelor’s degree in Arts and Performance with a concentration in Visual Arts from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2016 and her MFA from Southern Methodist University in 2020.

Conduit Gallery is honored to announce Been on My Way, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Dallas based artist, Desrieé Vaniecia. The exhibition will be the first at Conduit Gallery for the artist.

Online Viewing Room

Every defender, need a eulogy
I give my heart in perpetuity
To all the stars from my community
That ain't never got to shine and glisten.

Tobe Nwigwe, We Got Next (2019)

In Been on My Way, five large scale-female figures depicted in Flashe paint on linen are larger than life and reside in their respective compositions in various states of seated pose. As a body of work, the paintings are an ambitious project conceptualized by Vaniecia and created with funding awarded the artist by the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Award in early 2020.

Together, the five abstracted portraits represent the culmination, or as Vaniecia states, “the final exam” for the previous three years of her explorations of maternal influence and representations in popular culture of the black female form. Vaniecia, an artist known for her bold and elegantly pared-down compositions of black female figures, began this body of work with a with a photograph of her maternal grandmother in her early 20s. With this as the first of five depictions, Vaniecia continued to add portraits of women that reference her personal journey through life to date. Each painting depicts a woman in Vaniecia’s life that have pushed not only the artist, but the artist’s entire family, forward. The action of commemorating through paint, compels the artist’s intention that she for her own part continually push legacy and family forward for future generations. In addition to the five large canvases, a suite of smaller paintings that represent personal objects related to each woman will be on view.

While the paintings in the exhibition depict very specific individuals and relationships, Vaniecia’s formal choices in rendering the figures with simplified features and solid blocks of color compels each viewer to bring their own relational considerations to the work and weave together the universal with the personal.

Desireé Vaniecia was born in 1990 in Dallas, Texas. She earned a BFA in Graphic Design from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas in 2013 and has since shown throughout the north Texas region in such exhibitions as Our Faces, Our Voices (2020) at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX (curated by Raymond Wyatt and Shauna Benoit); Vibrant Thang (2020) at 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX (curated by Ciara Elle Bryant); Sensibility: revealed truths, tensions and vulnerability (2020), ART ROOM, Fort Worth, TX (juried by Taylor Barnes); ART 214 (2019) and Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, TX (curated by Susan Lecky).

The Wild West Mural Fest began as an extension to the Art Walk West programming in 2018, organized by local artist Will Heron. The initiative aims to bring new public mural works to the West Dallas community, from both DFW-based and national artists, that are asked to interpret ‘the Wild West’ in their art.

Group exhibition featuring 15 artists’ self portraits.

Group show featuring 12 artists curated by

Vivrant Thang Exhibition Statement

500X Gallery hosts the first physical show in their new gallery space, Vivrant Thang. Curated by Ciara Elle Bryant, Vivrant Thang features the work of 12 Black artists including Jeremy Biggers, Ari Brielle, Ciara Elle Bryant, Xxavier Edward Carter, LaShonda Cooks, Danielle Demetria East, Jer’Lisa Devezin, Elizabeth Hill, David-Jeremiah, Jas Mardis, Jamila Mendez, and Desireé Vaniecia. Vivrant Thang is an ode to Q-Tip as well as the sample from the original Love Unlimited Orchestra song I Wanna Stay.

Q-Tip defines Vivrant Thang as a take on the French word ‘vivant’ which means living. He is quoted as saying “So it’s… like a feeling, just like a breath of fresh air, kind of, like, spunky. Poppin’, zest, and all that there.” With that Ciara looked at what she felt the definition of living was as a Black woman and this is what she came up with:

Living is experiencing, persisting, breathing, surviving, flourishing, prospering, and providing nourishment.

Vivrant Thang is and will be a safe space. It serves as an alliance as well a reflection for the artist to create for themselves. It will give you a moment to just explore what your definition of living is and how it can be reflected in your work. Vivrant Thang gives a chance for the artist to be surrounded by kindred souls while providing a space where the viewer can see multiple facets of Black artwork. Viewing a collection of works by Black artists can change how Black artwork is viewed. This gives a new breadth to how Black artists can exist in the “Art World.”

As a member-run gallery, 500X has chosen to build a community that supports Black artists as well other artists of color. Black art should be shown everywhere, not in designated spaces or areas or only during specific times.

The new address is 516 Fabrication Street, Dallas, TX 75212. The exhibition will be available to view on www.500x.org and Fridays, Saturday and Sundays, by appointment only.