Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) is pleased to present “Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses,” the first museum exhibition with a conceptual focus on the late Houston hip hop legend DJ Screw. The exhibition explores visual arts practices that parallel the musical methods of this innovative DJ and feature unconventional photography and new media works by artists with personal ties to Houston, including B. Anele, Rabéa Ballin, Tay Butler, Jimmy Castillo, Jamal Cyrus, Robert Hodge, Shana Hoehn, Tomashi Jackson, Ann Johnson, Devin Kenny, Liss LaFleur, Karen Navarro, Ayanna Jolivet McCloud, Sondra Perry, and Charisse Pearlina Weston.

“Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses” is a two-part interdisciplinary exhibition orbiting around the legacy of the late Houston legend DJ Screw. He produced his namesake sound, “chopped and screwed,” by using two turntables to slow down and layer hip hop tempos. Despite his untimely death at age 29 in 2000, the DJ and leader of Houston’s Screwed Up Click continue to influence artistic genres around the world.

In their photo-adjacent practices, the participating visual artists appropriate, mash-up, collage, and mutate photographic inputs, in addition to slowing time. “Slowed and Throwed” contends that remixing “sampled” materials is a radical aesthetic act utilized by both artists and musicians. Through reconfigurations of sourced and original materials, the featured artists draw attention to inequities stemming from race, gender, and sexual orientation, suggesting new possibilities and alternative realities.

*Note that institutions may be temporarily closed to lessen the impact of COVID-19.

Image: DJ Screw grey tape, courtesy the Special Collections at the University of Houston Libraries.