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Stamps Gallery Announces Partnership Exhibit With Queens Museum

March 8, 2022

The Stamps Gallery and the Queens Museum in New York are partnering on an exhibit by the renowned artist Stephanie Dinkins, who focuses her work on exposing inequities and bias in artificial intelligence systems.

On Love & Data by Dinkins will be on view March 13-August 14, 2022 at the Queens Museum, New York. It was curated by Srimoyee Mitra, director of the Stamps Gallery. The work was shown in Fall 2021 at the Stamps Gallery, and Dinkins was a featured participant in the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

“On Love & Data was Dinkins first survey exhibition, which included new works and commissions that expanded Dinkins art practice and inquiry the structural biases embedded with artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. We are thrilled to partner with Queens Museum to bring Dinkins works to broader audiences. The exhibition bolsters the Gallery’s commitment to working with artists and designers whose ideas and projects catalyze positive social change in the 21st Century,” Mitra said.

View of the neon light sculpture Afro-Now-Ism on the left and the title wall and exhibtion text on the right. The title wall text is in purple pixelated font and there are large yellow squares in the middle of the title wall.
A large digital exhibition. There are 3 walls with videos being projected onto them that give the visual effect of layers. The background layer is a contrast of black with large white petals from an ocra plant. In the foreground are purple and yellow poppies and yellow roses. In the middle, there are 6 women, each wearing a different garment to represent the timeperiod they represent.
Standing in the open gallery space you see the text "Who are your/our people?" in front of you, with 8 black, brown, and green American flags lined up against the gallery window wall to your right.
Neon sign of text spread out across the wall. The words Afro, Now and Ism are in purple neon light. The words Now, Own and Now are in yellow neon light. There are tiny red lights embedded in between the words Afro, Now and Ism.

Images from Stamps Gallery installation, 2021

Dinkins is a transmedia artist who creates platforms for dialogue about race, gender, aging, and our future histories. Dinkins’ art practice employs immersive and interactive installations and community workshops to foster action towards making artificial intelligence systems more inclusive, accessible and transparent. 

Particularly driven to work with communities of color to co-create more equitable values grounded in social and technological ecosystems. Through the works in the exhibition, Dinkins exposes the hierarchies and biases that are embedded in technology, particularly as they pertain to race, class, gender, and one’s individual agency. The public is invited to participate in exploring how to create technology that is equitable and inclusive as it continues to be an integral part of our daily existence. The experience encourages audiences to question and contemplate their own relationship with technology, and how to build awareness through the experience. 

Title wall at the Queens Museum opening reads Stephanie Dinkins: Love and Data
Stephanie Dinkins speaks at the Queens Museum opening
A group of viewers at the exhibition opening in front of a title wall with large purple lettering
Srimoyee Mitra speaks at the Queens Museum opening

Images from Queens Museum opening, March 2022. Photos: Kuo-Heng Huang.

On Love & Data builds on Dinkins’ concept of Afro-now-ism, a manifesto Dinkins published in NOEMA magazine in the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd and the resurgence of protests against the murders of Black men and women at the hands of the police. Dinkins presents Afro-now-ism as an urgent and visionary mission to counter and rise above the injustices that disproportionality impact people of color, not only due to the failures of governmental or municipal structures, but also due to the pervasive impacts of AI and algorithmic systems that are embedded with the same biases. 

The Stamps Gallery is celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2022 as an emerging presence in Ann Arbor and the national art gallery scene.