Art Out: Grief and Grievance, Love Letters For Harlem, David Goldblatt: Strange Instrument
Dawoud Bey, b. 1953, Queens, NY, Fred Stewart II and Tyler Collins, from the series The Birmingham Project, 2012 Archival pigment prints mounted on Dibond 40 x 64 in (101.6 x 162.6 cm), Rennie Collection, Vancouver, © Dawoud Bey courtesy The New Museum
New York, NY...The New Museum is proud to present “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” an exhibition originally conceived by Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) for the New Museum, and presented with curatorial support from advisors Naomi Beckwith,
Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash. On view from February 17 to June 6, 2021, “Grief and Grievance” is an intergenerational exhibition bringing together thirty-seven artists working in a variety of mediums who have addressed the concept of mourning, commemoration, and loss as a direct response to the national emergency of racist violence experienced by Black communities across America. The exhibition further considers the intertwined phenomena of Black grief and a politically orchestrated white grievance, as each structures and defines contemporary American social and political life. Included in “Grief and Grievance” are works encompassing video, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, sound, and performance made in the last decade, along with several key historical works and a series of new commissions created in response to the concept of the exhibition.
The artists on view will include: Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Beasley, Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Theaster Gates, Arthur Jafa, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Julie Mehretu, Okwui Okpokwasili, Adam Pendleton, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindell, Cameron Rowland, Lorna Simpson, Sable Elyse Smith, Tyshawn Sorey, Diamond Stingily, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jack Whitten.
The exhibition is on view at New Museum From February 17 to June 6, 2021.
Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Lady Money Sings The Blues, Dye sublimation photograph on aluminum white matte finish, 2011, 20 x 24 x inches | 51 x 61 x cm, 13, edition of 3 @ 20x24 ©Ruben Natal-San Miguel courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery
NEW YORK, NY | February 22, 2020 – Claire Oliver Gallery is pleased to present Love Letters for Harlem an exhibition of photographs by John Pinderhughes, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Jeffrey Henson Scales and Shawn Walker. Love Letters for Harlem showcases the talents of these four Harlem-based photographers and their work that celebrates the lives and culture of Harlem. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Harlem Community Relief Fund, an initiative of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce (GHCC), who in concert with Harlem Week, ReThink Food NY, NY State Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, CCNY, NAACP are working together to combat food insecurity in Harlem. The exhibition will be on view by appointment February 22 – April 3, 2021.
“As longtime residents of Harlem, we are inspired by the rich cultural lineage of our neighborhood,” states gallerist Claire Oliver. “In the midst of this challenging year when we have all been so isolated, we wanted to showcase the resiliency and celebrate the individuals, geography and culture of Harlem through the intimacy of photography while also supporting a vital organization that provides urgently needed aid to our community in this time of need.”
A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will go towards supporting the more than 1,200 meals being served daily at the Salem United Methodist Church on 129th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd. “This is one of the biggest opportunities to feed people who are hungry,” said Winston Majette, Harlem Week Executive Director.
The exhibition has been organized with the help of art advisor and curator Leanne Stella, founder of the FLUX art fair, director of Art in Flux and co-founder of the Percent For Art team at Brown Harris Stevens real estate.
David Goldblatt, George and Sarah Manyane, 3153 Emdeni Extension, August 1972, gelatin silver hand print, dimensions TBD, unique, No. 76738 © David Goldblatt, courtesy Pace Gallery and Goodman Gallery
“The camera is a strange instrument. It demands, first of all, that you see coherently. It makes it possible for you to enter into worlds, and places, and associations that would otherwise be very difficult to do.” – David Goldblatt
New York – Pace Gallery is pleased to present David Goldblatt: Strange Instrument, an exhibition that brings together more than 60 photographs documenting South Africa—where Goldblatt was born in 1930 and lived until his death in 2018—at the height of apartheid, between the early 1960s the end of the 1980s. Curated by artist and activist Zanele Muholi, who was Goldblatt’s friend and mentee, the exhibition offers a deeply personal meditation on the brutality and humanity that Goldblatt captured in his strikingly beautiful images of everyday lives under conditions of profound injustice. Strange Instrument—on view February 26 – March 27, 2021—marks the first time that Muholi has engaged with Goldblatt’s work since his passing in 2018. Taking an expansive and affective approach to their mentor’s body of work, the exhibition presents a portrait of Goldblatt himself through Muholi’s eyes.
Surveying the diverse range of Goldblatt’s output, the show encompasses portraits and street scenes shot on the corners and parks of Johannesburg and other cities, as well as in neighborhoods and segregated townships where black and “colored” communities lived. Many such locales were later subjected to systematic demolition and dispossession of land, making Goldblatt’s photographs some of their only existing documentation. Such scenes are interwoven with images of commerce, architecture, mining, religion, leisure, and domestic life. The earliest image in the exhibition dates to 1962—just over a decade after the segregationist National Party rose to power in South Africa—and the latest work dates to 1990, the year that anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. Goldblatt did not consider himself an activist and never set out to make political work or anti-apartheid “propaganda”; however, he was always clear about his mission to expose the social and interpersonal reality of South Africa’s policies. “I will not allow my work to be compromised,” he once declared, “I comprise every day just by drawing breath in this country.”
