Black Figure Series
Dark & Divine™ is a visionary collaboration by figure model and creative entrepreneur Dasia Hood, crafted for the Black community.
This immersive experience invites Black artists to reclaim the narrative of Black bodies—sacred, powerful, and worthy of reverence—against the distortions of colonization and media. Through figurative art and writing, Dark & Divine™ offers workshops, discussions, and exhibitions that reawaken the Black community’s connection to nudity's cultural and spiritual significance across the African diaspora, embracing divinity, identity, and protest.
From costumed to fully nude figure sessions, each event fosters radical expression and healing, celebrating Blackness in human form. The series culminates in a 21+ bold, sensual, and spiritual exhibition of Black portraiture, showcasing local and regional collaborations between Black artists and models.
In Fall 2024, Dark & Divine™ will partner with the Harvey B. Gantt Museum, followed by the McColl Center in Summer 2025, featuring Southern Black artists to celebrate Black identity, artistry, and the divine.
Event Gallery Links
Figures in Color: Family Figure Painting
Dark & Divine R&B: 18+ Figure Drawing Session - Gallery Photography Credit: Xross, Votos Design
Celebrating Black Bodies as Art
Dark & Divine™ programming at Harvey B. Gantt Center spans three months, from August 2024 to October 2024, aligning with Gantt’s Wednesday Night Live, Family Saturday Afternoon, and Art After Dark events. Programming conceptualizes educational, artistic, and cultural perspectives within figurative art. It creates spaces for discussing experiences across the African-American Diaspora influencing body positivity, divine connections, and dysmorphia in the Black community.
Exhibition Partners
Fall 2024 Program
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Figures in Color: Family Figure Painting and Poetry Workshop
8.10 1:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. RSVP includes art supplies.
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Wednesday Night Live: Adults Only R&B Figure Drawing Session
9.18 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Free and open the public. RSVP required. Limited Seats available.
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Dark & Divine - Art After Dark Imitating Life
10.18 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
RSVP for Pop-up Exhibit, Workshop, and Artist Panel. Free and open to the public. Cash bar.
Elevated Black Figurative Art Experience for All Ages!
Figures in Color is an open figure painting session for all ages led by instructor Ida Mae, a watercolor artist, teacher, and curator. The two-hour session features live, fully clothed African-American art models and figurative watercolor techniques. Participants also use figurative art and creative writing to explore generational influences on body positivity in the Black community.
Figures in Color is part of Gantt’s Becoming the Sea Community Day. The weekend celebration of Becoming The Sea begins with the opening reception on Friday, August 9. It extends to a Saturday of discussion, hands-on art, behind-the-scenes exhibition exploration, live music, and more – all of which have ancestral and diasporic influences that form a bridge between Dakar and Charlotte. It is a day of experiences that the community can enjoy.
Exposure to Fine Art Techniques
Instructor-led figure drawing workshop: Figures in Color is led by fine art and watercolor instructor and artist Ida Mae.
Complimentary art supplies: Thanks to our sponsor, Jerry's Artarama Charlotte, watercolor paint, brushes, paper, and additional art supplies are provided.
Free and open to the public: Figure in Color is free for all ages.
Body Positivity Talks by YASÉ, featuring Tammeka Staley.
Dark & Divine™ R&B Figure Session welcomed artists and community members, ages 18 and up, to the Harvey B. Gantt Museum for an elevated figure drawing experience. Featuring a curated soundscape of sultry R&B Xai, the music was spellcasted by DJ Nebula; acclaimed art instructor Ida Mae led the event. Hosts Dasia Hood and the sensual Wild Recluse set the tone for the evening, which opened with stirring poetry readings, including Phyllis Wheatley's “On Being Brought from Africa to America” and Chike Carter’s “Ode to My Sweet Sexy Brown.” In this intimate setting, models Meka Wilson and Daniel Baptiste held 10-minute poses, inviting guests to immerse themselves in the creative and interactive journey.
Gallery photography credit: Xross, Votos Design
Sponsored by Jerry’s Artarama and Grindhaus Studios
Dark & Divine™: R&B 18+ Figure Drawing Session
Dark & Divine x Art After Dark
Dark & Divine™ featured seven local artists in a 21+ Pop-up Exhibition, co-curated by Wild Recluse, where figurative art with themes of beauty, identity, love, and divinity was showcased alongside a self-guide sensual collage workshop.
The exhibition included a four-person panel who discussed the beauty of Black bodies and experiences in the figurative art community.
For Collectors.
View and order Dark & Divine™ art for sale.
Dasia Hood, creator of Dark & Divine™ and Lorem Ipsum Listening Bar, presents [red]: Rated R, a daring and immersive exhibition that unfolds across Lorem Ipsum's hallway gallery and four meticulously curated rooms. Through a storytelling and sensory lens, this exhibition invites guests to embark on a transformative journey of sensual discovery and connection, navigating the stages of pleasure from flirtation to full appreciation. Each room is a chapter in this narrative, using film, visual arts, photography, and live performance to explore themes of intimacy, autonomy, and artistic expression.
Scheduled to debut on Valentine’s Day, this experience invites audiences to delve into themes of body autonomy, consent, sexual identity, sensuality, desire, taboo, and intimacy. The event features a pre-show screening of Wild Recluse’s new erotic film, Owl Pussy.
This is the film portion of Dark & Divine™, opening on March 6 at McColl Center.
Spring 2025 Exhibition
The McColl Center presents Dark & Divine™, a group exhibition curated by Dasia Hood, featuring artists Dionna Bright, Chad Cartwright, Patrick Sainte, Jerry Taliaferro, Darian Parham, Jason Dawkins, and Ida M. Irby.
Dark & Divine™ is a bold reawakening of the Black artist’s connection to nudity, exploring its cultural and spiritual significance across the African-American Diaspora. The exhibition challenges the historical distortions imposed by colonization, society, and media that have hypersexualized and desecrated Black nudity, creating a dialogue of shame around sensuality and self-image.
Through collaborative artist-model portraits, mixed media works, and personal storytelling, the featured artists reclaim Black bodies as sacred, powerful, and deserving of reverence. Each work reflects on nudity through spiritual, societal, and personal lenses, using it as a vehicle for self-expression, healing, and a redefinition of beauty.
Dark & Divine™ centers Black divinity as the perspective for exploring sensuality and nudity, inviting viewers to reconnect with their own bodies and sexuality as vessels of freedom, intimacy, and the divine. This transformative exhibition fosters new conversations about the inherent beauty and sacredness of Black bodies, offering a space for liberation and reverence.
Dates:
March 6th - May 24th
