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The Time Is Always Now, Philadelphia Asian American Film Fest, and more
The BSR Weekly Arts and Culture Roundup, November 7-13, 2024
Kyle V. Hiller
This is a great week to get in touch with your creative and expressive side, that’s for sure. And there will be opportunities to do just that. Coming up, new Germantown shop Multiverse offers an audio-sensory experience for book and comics nerds, a sticker festival and a zine festival celebrate a growing history and invite the community to be part of it, and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival returns with a hybrid format that makes every screening accessible.
Be safe, Philly.
The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
November 9, 2024-February 9, 2025
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia
The PMA hosts the US opening of this new exhibit this weekend, featuring 28 Black and African diasporic contemporary artists who use figurative painting, drawing, and sculpture to illuminate and celebrate the nuance and richness of Black contemporary life. The exhibit is traveling from the National Portrait Gallery in London, its title drawing inspiration from a James Baldwin essay and coming from British curator and writer Ekow Eshun.
Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival
November 7-17, 2024
Various locations and streaming online
PAAFF returns with film screenings at Asian Arts Initiative, Moore College of Art and Design, Vox Populi, the PMA, and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts for those who want to attend in person. For those who want to stay home, the festival is hybrid this year, offering online rental access to this year’s films. Features, shorts, documentaries, and performances are lined up for this year’s edition.
Characters Welcome All Stars: An International Sticker Art Show
November 8-10, 2024
Tattooed Mom, 530 South Street, Philadelphia
Sticker artists and sticker fans unite for a weekend of celebrating—you guessed it—sticker art. The weekend-long event will feature archival sticker artboards from 2012 to 2019 and sticker movie screenings on Saturday and Sunday.
Philly Zine Fest
Saturday, November 9, 10am-5pm
Mitten Hall at Temple University, 1913 North Broad Street, Philadelphia
The DIY and small press publishing festival that’s been a staple in Philly since 2002 is back this weekend in North Philly. The event is free and open to the public and is organized by the Soapbox Community Print Shop and Zine Library, a nonprofit that’s been offering affordable workshops, equipment access, exhibits, readings, and a library of rare handmade publications over the last 13 years.
Books & Wires #8 featuring Anne Ishii
Saturday, November 9, 2-4pm
Multiverse, 8026 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia
Multiverse, the new comics and books shop in Germantown, continues its Books & Wires series with Anne Ishii, writer, musician, and director of Asian Arts Initiative. The series features performances by modular synthesizer artists who post up in the shop while visitors browse about the store, enjoying science fiction-inspired electronic soundscapes. The event is free and open to the public.
Later in the week, be sure to check out Multiverse’s Creative Role Playing Game Workshop, a free workshop for youths aged 12 to 16 who are interested in Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. It will take place at the Chestnut Hill Library at 8711 Germantown Avenue (just a few blocks away) from 5-7pm.
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