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.
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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...
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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...
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Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
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In his composition, Chocolate Bars, Eggs, Milk, Lassry’s subjects are mirrored in their surroundings (both figuratively, through the chocolate colored backdrop and the brown frame; and literally, in the milky white, polished surface of the table), as the artist plays with color, shape, and the conventions of representational art both within and outside of the photographic tradition...
In establishing a deliberate distance between viewer and subject, Lassry raises questions about representation itself and how all portraits are, in effect, fully constructed objects that only gain meaning once we ascribe them with our own personal associations and emotions...
Art Basel in Miami Beach Diary: B-52s monkey around, channelling Marina Abramović and the Pérez gets its funk on Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023 blog Art Basel in Miami Beach Diary: B-52s monkey around, channelling Marina Abramović and the Pérez gets its funk on Plus: Scope gets in a pickle(ball), Perrotin says do look up and Elberto Muller takes the slow train The Art Newspaper 9 December 2023 Share Kate Pierson, singer with the 1980s band the B-52s, with one of the works on show at the Spectrum Miami art fair that were jointly created by band members and a group of chimps...
29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1 | Artsy Skip to Main Content Art 29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1 Isis Davis-Marks Feb 1, 2024 4:57PM To recognize Black History Month, Artsy is spotlighting 29 emerging Black artists—one for each day of this important month...