Match Fellow Adoria Maxberry (Most OutGROWing) has been working with Queens Village facilitating their 2024 iteration of "Through Her Eyes” initiative to honor the beauty and creativity of Black women. Maxwell’s program “Revolutionary Recipes” works with intergenerational members of participating Black Families to examine the ingredients of “recipes” that make Black motherhood. This work will culminate in a free exhibition hosted by the Contemporary Arts Center opening on Friday July 19th, 6PM. 

The Contemporary Art Center and Queens Village present their fourth collaboration of the Through Her Eyes project, featuring this year's artist, Adoria L. Maxberry with her project “Revolutionary Recipes: The Flavors of a Black Woman Amplified.” The annual Queens Village Co-LAB at the CAC with community workshops is currently underway, with an exhibition of Maxberry and community participants´ work opening July 19 in the P&G Gallery, from 6pm - 8:30p.m. with a public reception. Registration is recommended.

As a child, artist and curator, Maxberry recognized the uncanny ability for the Black Woman to heal, minister, care, and show love through food. “Revolutionary Recipes: The Flavors of a Black Woman Amplified” is a collaborative, intergenerational, and immersive exhibition that explores Black womanhood with an ethnographic focus on what ingredients made the woman in the stew of life.  

“Cooking with my mom and grandma before they passed, I found that often recipes were a guide, but the measurements were felt deep in the soul,” says Maxberry, sharing the inspiration behind the project. “The outcome was always a delicious, delectable dish. Now, I’d like to turn my focus away from the measurements, and ingredients of the dish and focus on what ingredients made the woman.”

As part of “Revolutionary Recipes,” Maxberry will collaborate with intergenerational Black families to co-create multimedia pieces reflecting each woman's unique and collective recipe. Using fiber arts, painting, illustrations, photography, and sculpture. These portraits and other ephemera will be part of the exhibition on view at the CAC.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to contribute their own recipes, which will be compiled into a recipe anthology celebrating Black women as sources of life, love, and community spirit.

“Queens Village’s journey started around a kitchen table, where stories were shared, activism began, and dreams were nurtured,” says Danyelle Bush. Queens Village´s Marketing Director. “This exhibition celebrates the rich tapestry of Black womanhood, amplifying the flavors of our heritage and the stories that have shaped us. Join us as we honor the kitchen table as more than just a place to eat, but as a sacred space where community, culture, and creativity collide.”

ABOUT ADORIA:
Maxberry is a visual and performance artist, designer, licensed educator, wife and mother of three, in Cincinnati. She facilitates unique, meaningful art experiences focusing on creativity, exploration and reflection. Her company, Most OutGROWing LLC, is dedicated to helping others grow spiritually, mentally and creatively through art.

Participating Community Artists include: Laurelle Kinga Bakienga, Cofi Higgins, Anzhjanae Paine, Monica R. Williams, Bridgette Miller, Shawna M Green and their families

“Revolutionary Recipes: The Flavors of a Black Woman Amplified” is a Through Her Eyes collaboration between Queens Village, Adoria L. Maxberry, Most OutGROWing, Wave Pool´s MATCH Fellowship and the CAC’s Co-LAB program.  

The Contemporary Art Centers´s  Co-LAB program is supported in part by ArtsWave. Wave Pool supports 'Revolutionary Recipes' through their MATCH Fellowship program, which embeds artists within businesses and organizations like Queens Village. 

Partners:
Queens Village is a supportive community of powerful Black women who come together to relax, repower, and take care of ourselves and each other. Queens Village is an initiative of Cradle Cincinnati, a collective impact organization that fights high rates of infant mortality that disproportionately affect Black women in Cincinnati and beyond. We center Black women’s voices on changing not just racial disparities in birth outcomes but also the conditions that drive inequity in maternal and infant health. We provide a safe space for Black mothers to support and be supported by their peers, to connect, to relieve stress, to process trauma and to build a better world together for ourselves and our children.

The Contemporary Arts Center is a catalyst for the freedom of artistic expression and the exploration of the creative process. We believe that art and creativity are universal experiences with the power to illuminate the challenges we need to address as citizens and societies to create a more equitable world. Driven by art, creators and other cultural thought leaders who engage with powerful questions of our time we provoke new perspectives and alternative points of view. Through our innovative and inclusive slate of programs, exhibitions, and services the CAC provides opportunities for encounters with trailblazing artists both local and global, and with one’s own creative potential.

Wave Pool is a socially-engaged art center that acts as a conduit for community change through artist opportunities and support. Pairing communities’ knowledge of their needs with artists’ sense of possibility, Wave Pool provides a structure whereby contemporary art and artists can be integral contributors to the fabric and success of our city, country, and beyond, by helping us build relationships and collective knowledge around complex issues, centering the insights and experience of those most intimately affected.