The Bronx Museum of the Arts is expanding outside with #SeeMeBronx, an interactive project about visibility, intersectionality, and identity. The project kicks off the Museum's 50th anniversary, which is focused on visibility as a tenet of social justice. As we take off into our next fifty years, we hope to reaffirm our mission as an admission-free, liberated space for communities to come to enjoy art and have important conversations. #SeeMeBronx was created as a way to spark conversations within our many intersecting communities about identity, equity, and inclusion. Sometimes the best way to dive into dialogue is by asking tough but important questions. We hope you will join us in shaping the conversation with your queries. 

For over two decades, Biggers has been developing a singular body of work that is deeply informed by African American history and traditions, and sustains a rich dialog with contemporary art on a national and international level, referencing urban culture, the body, sacred geometry, and American symbolism. The title of the Bronx Museum exhibition, Codeswitch, refers to both the artists’ quilt series known as the Codex series and to the idea of code-switching itself, or shifting from one linguistic code to another depending on the social context. The Codex series includes mixed media paintings and sculptures done directly on or made from pre-1900 antique quilts.

While celebrating Parlá’s roots in the hip-hop energy of the Bronx, this series of paintings address the suffering caused by redlining policies, the waves of displacement imposed by gentrification, and structural racism. It’s Yours encourages viewers to question ownership in New York’s rapidly changing neighborhoods. In addition to large-scale paintings in the museum’s gallery, the exhibition features Parlá’s sketchbooks and drawings from age ten to seventeen as well as site specific responses in the lobby and outdoors that seek to integrate the museum with the city.