Bronzeville Center for the Arts

Martine Syms Bronzeville Public Art Collection
2025-11-01 - 2026-11-30 | BCA Gallery 507, 507 W North Ave, Milwaukee, WI, 53212, United States
Martine Syms combines conceptual grit, comedy, and social commentary to respond to her immediate reality, outside of traditional methods of documenting life experiences. Animated by the “problems of truth” her practice questions image and language systems and their relationship to power. She is internationally known for a nuanced practice that spans across writing, performance, moving image, and installation.
Syms created four new works for the new collaboration between Bronzeville Center for the Arts and Sculpture Milwaukee. This presentation—Find A Way, A Short Meditation, Belief Strategy XIII, and an untitled photograph—includes photography, mantra, and visual patterns, offering a meditative prompt for viewers moving through the day-to-day.

Above, Below, Within
2026-03-26 - 2026-08-14 | BCA Gallery 507, 507 W North Ave, Milwaukee, WI, 53212, United States
Experience the transformative solo exhibition of Maryland-based artist Ciarra K. Walters. Through performance and video, Walters transforms her body into temporary sculptures, embedding herself in natural and architectural environments across the U.S. and internationally. Her ritualistic, intuitive movement films explore the reclamation of self, power, and the body’s deep connection to place.
READ: Black Performance Art as Cultural Preservation & Self Reconnection by Phoenix S. Brown, BCA Curator
Curatorial Statement
Above, Below, Within is a solo presentation of performance-based work by interdisciplinary artist Ciarra K. Walters. Based in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Walters embeds her body within natural landscapes, interpreting the influence of her surroundings as she shifts, flows, and shapes herself into living movement sculptures. Often dressed in color-coded uniforms representing one of the seven Chakras, she centers each performance on the spiritual strengths they embody. Outstretched arms echo horizon lines; legs tilt toward cardinal directions as scenes cut between waterfalls, deserts, and human-made monuments. Captured intuitively on video, Walters invites viewers to witness her spirit in communion with the skies above and the earth below.
Stunning vistas serve as familiar entry points into Walters’ meditative practice where she confronts grief, emotional vulnerability, and endurance. While she is typically the sole figure within the frame, she is rarely alone. In Me the Tree, Like My Mother Eileen (2024), Walters, dressed in brown, roots herself in an autumnal mountain forest in Maryland. Surrounded by hibernating trees, she embodies a poem addressed to her late mother as lines of yellow text briefly appear above her crown. In Blue Like Some Part of the Ocean (2020), her performance is interrupted by tourists passing through the sandy seascape behind her. Despite the disruption, Walters completes her movement cycle, then rushes forward to stop the camera, asserting presence, persistence, and control within an ever-changing environment.
Across these works and more, Walters positions the body as a strong vessel and instrument, where inner transformation meets external force. Landscape, weather, memory, and interruption become collaborators, revealing movement as care, resistance, and spiritual return. As you move through the space and approach the performance platform in the center of the room, consider how breath, movement, and repetition might open new ways of being, above, below, and within.

Ck Ledesma: If you put your ear to it, you can hear the waves
2026-06-11 - 2027-06-13 | Site of Future African American Art Museum, 2312 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, MIlwaukee, 53212, United States
Water carries us. Milwaukee artist Ck Ledesma honors Yemayá — deity of the ocean — with a living outdoor altar rooted in Santería, diaspora, and devotion.
See the year-long outdoor sculpture installation by Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist Ck Ledesma. Drawing from the spiritual tradition of Santería, Ledesma builds an evolving altar dedicated to Yemayá, the Orisha of the oceans – bridging the Caribbean Sea and Lake Michigan as an act of devotion, cultural preservation and the ebb and flow of creation.
Curatorial Statement:
Ck Ledesma: If you put your ear to it, you can hear the waves
If you put your ear to it, you can hear the waves is a temporary outdoor sculpture installation by Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist Ck Ledesma. Using clay, mirrors, tiles, and other materials, Ledesma reimagines an outdoor altar influenced by the spiritual tradition of Santería. Commonly practiced in home settings rather than temples, Santería is an African diasporic religion that blends Catholicism with West African spiritual traditions in the Caribbean, especially in Puerto Rico. The tradition was developed as a path for African-descended communities to maintain their beliefs and protect their culture under Spanish colonization which began in the early 16th century.
Ledesma’s altar is dedicated to Yemayá, the Orisha (or deity) of the ocean and the Mother of all things. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the artist will continue to add and shape the altar, reflecting their devotion to cultural preservation, stewardship, and the creative ebb and flow of artmaking.
Although Wisconsin is not bordered by an ocean, the artist draws conceptual parallels between the Caribbean Sea and the vast, often turbulent nature of Lake Michigan. Both bodies of water hold deep histories and invite us to gather along their shores. They nourish us and remind us of our humanity in the face of nature’s immense power.
Because water has been one of the primary forces carrying people of the African diaspora to the Americas, and continues to shape the landscapes we occupy, Ledesma’s installation honors the long tradition of spiritual practices that honor the natural forces greater than ourselves. It also acknowledges that shores offer respite and reflection for the Bronzeville community and for Milwaukee as a whole.

About Ck Ledesma
Ck Ledesma Borrero is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator originally from
San Juan, Puerto Rico, now living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for nearly two
decades. Their artwork is rooted in community engagement and social practice, using
performance, sculpture, and multimedia to create experiences that expand the
definition of art beyond the object and into the realm of dialogue and collective
meaning.
Read: Saltborn, a poem by Ck Ledesma
