Know Theatre will soon premiere Audrey Cefaly’s new play Alabaster, in which Alice, a famed photographer, sets out to shoot a series on the topography of scars using women as her subjects. The project leads her to June, an isolated woman whose family was killed in a horrific accident in which she was the lone survivor.
Oh, yeah. And it’s narrated by a goat. Bah!
But really, the Pultizer Prize-nominated work is about what it means to “seen.” An apt counter piece to the show is the evocative and intimate work of Cuban artist/photographer Evelyn Sosa Rojas, who is represented by New York’s Uncommon Beauty Gallery. Upon entering the theater, guests will notice Rojas’ black-and-white portraits, which wrap around into the Know’s Underground gallery space.
Curated by Jens G. Rosenkrantz Jr. of Pendleton Street Photography, the gallery show is part of the ongoing project Bridges Not Walls, a Cuban and American art exchange initiative that Rosenkrantz says he has been working on for five years. He travels to Cuba, buys work and promotes exhibitions there, in Cincinnati and in New York with the aim of supporting Cuban artists and staying true to the project’s namesake.
Rojas’s work has been shown in the Queen City before, namely as part of YWCA’s A Celebration of Life exhibition and The Carnegie’s Art of She. When the Know approached Bridges Not Walls about putting something together in conjunction with Alabaster, Rosenkrantz says that they gravitated toward Rojas.
“As a fellow photographer, I admire the intimacy (in her photography) as far as (her models are) friends, lovers, ex-lovers; they’re in settings like they just came out of the shower and (are) still lying in bed, so they’re not all made up,” he says when asked what initially drew him to Rojas’s work. “It just feels very personal to her. And having met her, I relate to her personally. I think she’s a great person.”
Alabaster is made up of an all-woman cast. Rojas, too, turns her lens to femininity. As a bio by her work reads, “Her models are always ladies typical of Havana society, with its conflicts and ravings, but its aspirations are always ecumenical.”
Rendered in hazy, high-contrast monochrome, her subjects are captured in what feel to be ephemeral moments. Some faces are obscured by tendrils of smoke; others steady their gaze directly forward, be they standing on a city street or lying in bed. But no subject feels overly posed. Rojas captures them in their natural expressive states.
It’s stunning work that, should you stop in to see Alabaster, is well worth the extra time to take in.
Alabaster opens Feb. 28 and runs through March 21. More info: knowtheatre.com
This article appears in Feb 19-28, 2020.
