NEW YORK, NY (PNAN) – On view through Friday, December 23, 2002 at Richard Gray Gallery, “Citing Black Geographies” presents the work of fifteen artists whose practices examine “black space” which is a term describing the topographies, zones, scenes, and structures that portend black cultural experience.
The group exhibition includes works by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Dawoud Bey, McArthur Binion, the Black Arts Movement School Modality, Nick Cave, Coco Fusco, Theaster Gates, Rashid Johnson, Tony Lewis, the Staples Jr. Singers, Tavares Strachan, Jan Tichy, jina valentine, Carrie Mae Weems and Amanda Williams.
With works ranging from painting, print, installation, and drawing to photography, sound, video, film, and performance, the exhibition examines periodic iterations of black space. A photographic series by Dawoud Bey, “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” speaks to historical notions of black space, capturing seemingly innocuous sites obscured under the veil of night. Devoid of discernible architectural elements, the depicted spaces invoke the narrative of the Underground Railroad and the existence of freedom spaces that emerged following laborious journeys to the North.
Examining black space as a contemporary ideal, Rashid Johnson adopts an aspirational perspective in the video, “Black & Blue” in which he interprets the exclusive Long Island vacation destination of the Hamptons as black space and envisions the purported “good life” that has been rigorously gate-kept from black and brown communities. Using his family as the protagonists of the film, Johnson tessellates domestic scenes of affluence commonly associated with whiteness onto non-white figures.
Her contribution to the exhibition, “Redefining Redlining” by Amanda Williams questions and reinterprets redlining, one of the systematic physical constructs that has historically demarcated black space. Williams will plant red tulips along parcels of land on Chicago’s South Side to explore how social and political traditions create and transmit forms of belonging. Utilizing the ubiquitous flower, Williams re-designates spatial value in an act of remembrance of redlining policies that delineate black urban areas.
Citing also affirms black roots in the American South with a contemporary live recording by the Staples Jr. Singers, “When Do We Get Paid (In Full),” co-produced by the show’s Curator Romi Crawford, a professor in the visual and critical studies and liberal arts departments at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and the record label, Luaka Bop.