152.4 x 114.3 cm
Xaviera Simmons often employs her own body and collected materials in the service of her photographs and performances. Not to be mistaken as mere portraiture, however, Simmons’ works are explorations of the Black body in relation to landscape and other dimensions of non-linear space and time. Concealing and flattening her subjects with costumes and collage-like, abstract pictorial devices, the artist arranges archival photographs, printed textiles, and anthropological artifacts in configurations that highlight the power of visual culture to shape contemporary understandings of the self. Dressed in wax-printed broadcloth, the subject of Sundown (Number Twenty) holds a photograph from the Jim Crow era in her left hand and an African mask in her right. The busy backdrop of tropical flora reinforces problematic associations of fantasy and exoticism suggested by the masked figure. Simultaneously concealing and replacing her own image, Simmons allows her individual identity to dissolve into the cultural constructs and histories that each artefact and image holds.
Artist Xaviera Simmons’s diverse body of work is committed to multiplicity. Eschewing linear notions of history, her approach to investigating themes such as the shifting notions surrounding landscape and the conditions of African American female experience are cyclical in nature. Her studio practice demonstrates a fidelity to no single artistic modality or creative process; rather, Simmons’ interdisciplinary pursuits are in constant, active flux. Encompassing installation, photography, performance, and sound and video works, her evolving approach to artmaking is emblematic of the plurality of cultural experience and the myriad ways in which identity is constructed in contemporary culture.
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
The Illusion of Everything (2014) follows an unseen pedestrian as he navigates the Australian city of Melbourne’s dense and intricate network of laneways...
For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea...
Neglected middle class may be key to growing stagnant art market Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art market analysis Neglected middle class may be key to growing stagnant art market The spotlight tends to fall on big spenders, but what of “professional class” buyers, who often feel intimidated by the art world? Scott Reyburn 11 December 2023 Share Injecting new life: initiatives such as Avant Arte and Artist Support Pledge that attract less well-off collectors could revive a flat market Photo: splitov27 Art Basel and UBS recently issued their latest annual Survey of Global Collecting , which analyses the habits and attitudes of more than 2,800 high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) across the world...
Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...
In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text...
Mika Tajima’s Pranayama sculptures are built from carved wood and chromed Jacuzzi jets and are presented as artefacts...
The black-and-white photograph Men (055, 065) (2012) depicts two similarly built young men – young and slim, with dark tousled hair and a square jaw line – seated aside one another in identical outfits...
The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive...
MAKING BLACK ARCHIVES IN EUROPE How do we make Black archives within western contexts? In this roundtable discussion, representatives from Afropea (France), Black Cultural Archives (UK), the Black Queer Archives (Netherlands) and Black Archives Sweden discussed their various approaches to autonomy, infrastructure, economics, and sustainability in creating and maintaining Black archives within Europe...