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A Monthly Culture Matrix For the Cosmopolitan Traveler

Shantell Martin: Words and Lines


Denver Art Museum / Denver / Art

“I draw,” says the multimedia artist Shantell Martin. “I draw on everything.” Martin’s work, thick black markings that run along white surfaces (or vice versa), has been described as a meditation of lines. It’s also a dance—sometimes solo, sometimes with others, as in 2018, when she embedded herself at the New York City Ballet, then filled the theater and the stage with her lively lines, no surface off limits, not even the skin of the dancers. According to the choreographer Justin Peck, Martin’s drawings turned the dancers into “lines and shapes, and faces began to disappear.” In Denver, her interactive installation explores identity, intersectionality, and play. —E.C.

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Denver Art Museum 100 W 14th Ave Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204, United States
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