Bars Exhibited [BEing]

April 18 – June 28, 2025

Bars Exhibited [BEing] is a powerful curatorial experience illuminating the legacy of Purvis Young (1943–2010)—the visual griot of Overtown, whose voice resounds through color, texture, and truth.

Featuring 15 original works by Young, with several of the works never before publicly displayed, the exhibition explores the recurring motif of jail bars and shackles in his art, symbolizing both physical confinement and spiritual endurance. These works, composed on found and upcycled materials, stand as visual testimonies to a life shaped by struggle, hope, and creative defiance. It is believed that following a brief period of incarceration, Young returned to his practice with renewed fervor; a love for art that was initially introduced to him through his uncle who was also a self-taught artist. His works in Bars Exhibited [BEing] are sourced from individuals who are deeply connected to the artist’s life and the community he never stopped portraying.

Jamaican-born artist Marcus Blake offers a complementary installation to this exhibition, TAPenoLogy. This installation offers a complementary meditation on presence, legacy and liberation. Together, these works ask us to consider art not just as expression, but as awareness; a way of BEing in a world that honors truth an transformation.

Curated by Terrance Cribbs-Lorrant, the exhibition is informed by [re]search in spatial analytics and the geographies influences that gave rise to both artists’ practices. It threads together individual and collective responsibility to the art form that typically gets them classified as an outsider artist.

Exhibition Contributors:

Modern Artifacts Contemporary Masters Gallery | Silo Crespo Family Collection | Black
Collectors Gallery | JET Art Service

This exhibition is sponsored and supported by: