Photo by Claire Ritz, Courtesy of Artist and Lehmann Maupin
In solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, this multi-day virtual curatorial project addresses the senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks, and the continual reverberations of systemic racism in the United States suffered by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. Aligning with art-activists Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu sentiment portrayed in The Revolution will come in every Direction (2019), HLK intern Anna Greenspan prepared this public micro-curation to be viewed on HLK’s Instagram Stories and Highlights. Here, she writes about the curation’s goal to amplify Black narratives throughout the contemporary art landscape.
Honoring Black Artists is a collection of work by Black artists, from various backgrounds, geographies, genders, sexual orientations, and faiths.
Since this project is by no means an extensive survey of Black artists today, an Open Reply form will be included at the IG Story’s end, and a resulting compilation at this post’s end, an advantage of exhibiting within the flexible and transformative digital realm.
In an interview for Art21’s documentary “Kerry James Marshall: Being an Artist,” the painter reflects on a Langston Hughes essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Hughes observes that a Black artist’s position in their field is scaffolded by this racial bias; Marshall instead condones focusing on an artist’s contribution to artistry in the field. Indeed, we can see the (mere) beginnings of Marshall’s statement in art institutions’ recent efforts to diversify. A gallery at the new MoMA features Faith Ringgold’s 1967 cubist mural American Series #20: Die, and its rather troublesome (albeit notable) neighbor, 50 years Die’s senior: Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. As exemplified by this creative activism, we all have a duty to participate, something ever-effective at a time when Black people and their allies are collectively fighting for Black Lives. And, as Hughes advocated for over 90 years prior, and as Marshall emphasizes today, myself and many others look forward to a future in which racially-charged systemic imbalances dissipate, and there is subsequent unbiasedness in the art fields.
Photo Courtesy of Artist and Library Street Collective
The project’s first piece is from Jammie Holmes’ five part series displaying George Floyd’s last words above major U.S. cities. Please I Can’t Breathe (Detroit) (2020), hauntingly, is a near parallel to the final statement by Eric Garner, another victim of race-based police brutality. Tugged through dissipating clouds on a near-fluorescent-blue sky, Floyd’s words are clearly visible, despite the immense distance.
Holmes’ series may be seeped in metaphor. An enlightening conversation with HLK revealed its timely correspondence with a contagious virus which fatally attacks the respiratory system and a dying planet exhausted of resources. Both imminent issues are affected by fragile preventative mechanisms which are ever-magnified in and disproportionately endured by Black and IPOC communities. As such, it is as important as ever to support and re-scaffold the spaces in which marginalized communities can fully breathe.
Photo Courtesy of Artist
Darryl Westly’s Interior with Ceiling (2016) may very well respond to this necessity. Like much of the artist’s work, this painting challenges classical structures and subject matters by incorporating contemporary phenomena and literally restructuring spaces.
This idea is further brought to light via Nari Ward’s Apollo / Poll (2017). The sculpture features an intermittently blinking A and second O in the historic theater’s name: perhaps reflecting the importance of political participation to protect and foster Black spaces, despite widespread disenfranchisement resulting from this broken system.
Photo Courtesy of Artist
Opening spaces is ever-important at a moment when, as of 2019, Black artists are the most underrepresented ethnicity in major American museum collections (Topaz). The essentiality of valuing contributions by people from marginalized communities is a message further conveyed in the punchy-yet-saccharine pieces such as Sell To Black Collectors (Green) (2020) by multi-media collagist Genevieve Gaignard.
Photo Courtesy of Artist, from Carriageworks and Jack Shainman Gallery
Persistent racial injustice in America has possibly reached a turning point since the ignition of both physical and digital activism over this past month. In concluding this project, I wanted to include pieces which point towards hopeful sentiment: one artwork being Nick Cave’s brilliant installation, Until (2016). The piece commences with an immersive field of glittering foil appendages, representing the grim reality of racially-biased gun violence and police brutality. Walking through the forged path reveals a quite incredible destination. Suspended one story above the ominous meadow is a platform: a tapestry of opaque crystals and chandeliers, obscuring a bountiful Eden of ceramic animals above, and figuratively accessible by several scaffolded neon ladders. Until’s ending evokes some heaven-like place, some future state of calm antedating the multitudinous, present calamities.
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Continue exploring this curation. Featuring work by Bill Traylor, William H. Johnson, Clementine Hunter, Gordon Parks, Azikiwe Mohammed, Adam Pendleton, Loïs Mailou Jones, Lonnie Holley, Marcus Leslie Singleton, and Noah Davis.
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Photo by Pierre Le Hors, Courtesy of Artist
and Marlborough Gallery
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase through the Barbara Coffey Quilt Endowment
Photo: Gordon Parks Foundation
Photo Courtesy of Artist and Anna Zorina Gallery
Photo Courtesy of Artist and Pace Gallery, New York and London
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Gladys P. Payne in honor of Alice P. Moore
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Bequest of the artist
Photo Courtesy of Artist
Photo Courtesy of Artist’s Estate and David Zwirner Gallery
While art plays a critical role in educating audiences on these imminent issues, actions speak louder than words. Please consider contributing to these organizations which support Black artists, as well as these BLM partners which support African American communities across the country.
