Cecil McDonald, Jr.

2012 - 2013
(Logan Center Gallery)

https://www.cecilmcdonaldjr.com/
Instagram: @cecilmcdonald


I am most interested in the intersections of masculinity, familial relations, and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of black culture, particularly as this culture intersects with and informs the larger culture. Through photography, video, and dance/performance, I seek to investigate and question the norms and customs that govern our understanding of each other, our families, and the myriad of societal struggles and triumphs. I studied fashion, house music and dance club culture before receiving a MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where I currently serve as an adjunct professor and a teaching artist at the Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College Chicago. My work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, with works in the permanent collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago Bank of America LaSalle Collection, and Museum of Contemporary Photography. I was awarded the: Joyce Foundation Midwest Voices & Visions Award, the Artadia Award, The Swiss Benevolent Society, Lucerne, Switzerland Residency and the 3Arts Teaching Artist Award. I participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in July 2013. In 2016 the first edition of my monograph In The Company of Black was published and was shortlisted by the Aperture Foundation for the 2017 First PhotoBook Award.

Cecil McDonald is interviewed by Dr. Terri Francis, Director of the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University on his "Cuts and Beats" series

In this video, McDonald joins MacArthur "Genius" Award winning photographer Dawoud Bey as the two celebrated Chicago-based artists discuss their mutual dedication to documenting of black life.

All that Light: Works Detail

18.
Let It Alone Watch It Work

Cecil McDonald, Jr
2017
Pigment print montage

19.
Minstrel Man

Cecil McDonald, Jr
2020
Pigment print montage

20.
Bodydown to Lovetown

Cecil McDonald, Jr
2017
Pigment print montage

Logan Center Exhibitions

Curator’s Notes

Artist/photographer Cecil McDonald, Jr. is noted for the way he "sees the process of cutting, altering, and reassembling historical images as a metaphor for the complex histories of Black America." His contributions to this exhibition are a part of his lauded body of work "Cuts and Beats" in which Mcdonald "subverts often racist representation (like Vaudeville- and Minstrel-era publicity stills) by building new images using collage, video, and performance." These images seek to connect and superimpose the spatial and personal agency felt in Chicago's stepper sets and house music scenes and early black vaudeville performance which often included and upturned blackface or minstrel imagery.