What that darkness may contain: Photographing Black skin

A True Picture of Black Skin
by Teju Cole, The New York Times Magazine, February 18, 2015

Kyle Abraham's "Watershed" moment

Kyle Abraham (front) and company in The Watershed
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Kyle Abraham's The Watershed is, in no way, a work about opulence in the usual sense.  But at the end of my evening at New York Live Arts, that word quickly came to mind. I guess I mean an opulence of intention, conception, execution. An opulence of confidence. More than just making a new work. Really feeling that, for once, you've got the goods. And there's the deftly coordinated look, across a color spectrum I associate with humble yet versatile clay, of the set (by visual artist Glenn Ligon), lighting (Dan Scully) and costume designs (Karen Young). Your partners got this, too, clicking together all over that stage like the pieces of a solved puzzle. Satisfying. This production is large. My guest said she envisions it at Lincoln Center, but I was thinking BAM.

I have enjoyed KyleAbraham/Abraham.in.Motion without really understanding how the choreographer's female dancers, no matter how focused their presence and rigorous their technique, never seem to pop from their surroundings like the male ones almost always do, and that has not changed. My most vivid memories of The Watershed will always be what men--individually or together--do, even how they radiate a palpable and purposeful individuality when they merely walk out into the space. And that includes Abraham himself, in one scene, sashaying in a satin gown and cottony wig and smearing light concealer all over his face.

Kyle Abraham in a scene from The Watershed
with set by Glenn Ligon
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Far from some overt, linear discourse on America's issue with race (and gender and sexuality), The Watershed appears to have been dreamed up like a series of scrims placed one behind another, each bearing a saturated or filmy stream of visual information. (There's sonic information, too--from Otis Redding to Chopin.) At any moment, you reach in as deep as you want, taking in what the dancers are doing--as dancers, as dancers of different genders, as dancers of different races--and making associations, perhaps according to your generation, your memories, your strongest concerns. The Watershed is, well, watery, a place of integration and transition, a turning point for many currents. Which one will carry you now?

So many ways to swim. Some of the music (Redding) takes me. The choreography, made in collaboration with the dancers, is an abundant--yes, opulent--gush and, true to this troupe's fashion, mercurial and full of flair. ("Beautiful," my guest called it, even as she felt that useful ambivalence about the way artists like Abraham, like Kara Walker, can draw us ever closer to disturbing things--like the most explosive racial stereotypes--by the beauty of their presentation.) When I zoom in on the dancers as dancers, I think I see Abraham quietly shaping an understory about how race plays out in the dance world. If I pull back, I see all of this in a more historical and societal context--literally, as projected images of civil rights demonstrators set upon by police dogs or cops beating a man into the ground play across the stage's wall. And it makes me wonder. The two things--artistic current and societal current--are they, in essence and effect, so different?

In a brief passage that made me ponder this, two Black dancers, contentedly going about the business of dancing, suddenly assume a submissive posture--chests sunken, heads bowed--when a white dancer suddenly enters and stands watching them. He maintains his dominant posture, his silent gaze, just long enough for it to register in our heads as a threat with all kinds of historical resonance. Just long enough. Then--surprise or no surprise--he peaceably slips into formation with them as they all finish out their dance.

If you noticed this moment at all, you might ask, "What did I just see?" Or, "Did I really see that, or did I see it/read it right?" All sorts of slippery stuff like that goes on in The Watershed, where irresistible rhythms and the dancing they inspire pull people of different cultures together. The work is chock full of images--some subtle, some blatant, some proffered with a wicked sense of humor and entitlement--that can only be willfully ignored.

I'm set to see Abraham's other New York Live Arts premiere, When the Wolves Came In, on September 30. More will be revealed.

KyleAbraham/Abraham.in.Motion includes Abraham, Matthew Baker, Winston Dynamite Brown, Tamisha Guy, Catherine Ellis Kirk, Penda N'diaye, Jeremy "Jae" Neal, Jordan Morley and Connie Shiau. Sound design by Sam Crawford.

Remaining performances of The Watershed: Friday, September 26*, Wednesday, October 1, Friday, October 3** at 7:30pm, all reportedly sold out. For additional information, click here.

*September 26 at 6:30pm: Come Early Video Screening and Talk: Visual Artist and Videographer Carrie Schneider discusses her dance on camera collaboration with Kyle Abraham/AIM

*October 3: Stay Late Discussion: Aesthetics of Jazz and the Performance of Protest, moderated by Carrie Mae Weems

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Black Artists Retreat, Chicago 2014, invites proposals

2014 [B.A.R.] OPEN PROPOSAL Research/Advocacy/Criticism/Exhibition

Following our first gathering in 2013, Theaster Gates, Carrie Mae Weems, Sarah Workneh, Marlease Bushnell, and Eliza Myrie came together to share what we had heard from participants and our own feelings on what could continue to happen with the Black Artists Retreat. As we prepare for [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014 we are seeking proposals that explore a range of topics related to black cultural production in its many forms.

We identified four focus areas that can lend structure to the concerns of the community without overdetermining what the community itself thinks is important. Proposals, while open, should fall under one of the following four categories: 

Research/Advocacy/Criticism/Exhibition

This open proposal is an opportunity for individuals to share their own thoughts on where our cultural production stands. What are the issues that we now face? What are the themes, concepts, and ideas that underscore critical thought and artist’s production?

Assembling a diverse and intergenerational group of proposal reviewers will allow us to assess where there is consensus. The invited panelists will meet in New York City to review proposals and select the presenters for [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014. Those proposals selected will have the period from May to August to expand their abstract in order to more fully present their ideas during the August retreat.

Please consider how your proposal can contribute to and foster the discussion of concerns facing the entire [B.A.R.] community, your proposal may consider individual presentations or group presentations and panels.
At this time there is no funding for the realization of proposals.

March 31: Proposals Due

April: Proposal review and deliberation

May: Chosen proposal authors contacted

August 21-23: Proposals presented as part of [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014

For complete information, including application and proposal guidelines, click here.

B.A.R. (Black Artists Retreat) Web site

Carrie Mae Weems retrospective at Guggenheim Museum

Carrie Mae Weems: 
Three Decades of Photography and Video

Guggenheim Museum

January 24-May 14

Carrie Mae Weems
A Broad and Expansive Sky—Ancient Rome (from Roaming), 2006
Chromogenic print, 73 x 61 inches (185.4 x 154.9 cm)
Private collection, Portland, Oregon
© Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems
Untitled (Man and mirror) (from Kitchen Table Series), 1990
Gelatin silver print, 27 1/4 x 27 1/4 inches (69.2 x 69.2 cm)
Collection of Eric and Liz Lefkofsky, promised gift to The Art Institute of Chicago
© Carrie Mae Weems
Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago

New York Times critic Holland Cotter's otherwise admiring review of Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (here) chides the Guggenheim Museum for not devoting its central, spiraling rotunda to Weems. Right now, if you visit the Guggenheim, you'll find that sloping spiral roped off in preparation for the upcoming Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe and that show's crates filling much of the ground floor.

The original Weems retrospective, curated by Kathryn Delmez, opened in September 2012 at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts. According to Cotter, the Guggenheim omits some works included in previous stops along the show's tour, and the exhibition has been broken up into galleries scattered over a few floors. Cotter points out that, for a first New York retrospective of Weems's career, thirty years worth of work, the limited selection and spatial placement give this Black American artist, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, short shrift. Cotter's argument seems all the more reasonable and urgent once you appreciate Weems's entire mission, which is all about visibility--to underscore and creatively document presence and experience against racist, sexist omissions and erasures.

She has done this, magnificently, in a variety of ways. Often putting her own body--at once, deific and down-to-earth--front and center in her photography and video work is the boldest stroke. Whether facing us head-on and meeting our gaze with her own or, by turning her back to the camera, slipping into iconic anonymity as in her dramatic Roaming series, Weems answers a denying world with defiance as if to say, Without my presence, you could not have come to be what you are.

I took a tip from Frida who from her bed painted incessantly--beautifully while Diego scaled the scaffolds to the very top of the world. -- from Weems's text for Not Manet's Type (1997)

Weems claims space for African and Afro-Atlantic realities, for people of African descent, particularly women, and our families and communities within society and its art.

Weems also exerts an artist's right not just to make new stuff but to appropriate existing objects--say, J. T. Zealy's daguerreotypes of "Negroid types" from slavery days--sealing these excavated memories under glass etched in white text, seizing control of how they will be seen and understood. She brings marginalized history to the table just as, in The Kitchen Table Series, she brings everyday eros to the table. Because she locates herself or others in historical time and in dreamtime and in something eerily combining the two--see her 2008 video Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment--we come to understand that we can do and often do the same.

The Guggenheim show might not have everything it could have or take pride of place in the main gallery, but it does educate and inspire (Guggenheim visitor information). See also Brooklyn Museum's Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey (closing March 9).

Considerably more: two portraits of Carrie Mae Weems

Artist Carrie Mae Weems Talks Race, Gender, and Finally Getting the Recognition She Deserves
by Michael J. Agovino, ELLE, November 20, 2013

And here's more:

Women photographers in the news

Photographer Carrie Mae Weems wins a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship:

Syracuse photographer receives prestigious MacArthur Fellowship

by Ken Sturtz, Syracuse.com, September 25, 2013

*****

© Beverly Joubert: National Geographic exhibit “Women of Vision”
“In a hunting game with her mother, a young leopard leaps through tall grass” 

National Geographic

presents

Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment

October 10, 2013–March 9, 2014 

Open daily 10am-6pm

An exhibition of work by eleven award-winning women photojournalists, curated by National Geographic Senior Photo Editor Elizabeth Krist.

“Women of Vision” features nearly 100 photographs, including moving depictions of far–flung cultures, compelling illustrations of conceptual topics such as memory and teenage brain chemistry, and arresting images of social issues like child marriage and 21st–century slavery. In addition to the photographs, visitors will have an opportunity to learn how National Geographic magazine (NGM) picture editors work closely with the photographers to select images and tell a story. Video vignettes will present first–person accounts that reveal the photographers’ individual styles, passions and approaches to their craft.

All the photographers featured in the exhibition will be at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10, joining journalist Ann Curry for a panel discussion on the power of photography and the many people and places represented in their assignment work. The event will be live–streamed on NationalGeographic.com. Curry also wrote the foreword to the exhibition’s companion book, “Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment,” along with National Geographic magazine Editor–in–Chief Chris Johns. The book will be available in the National Geographic Museum Store.

National Geographic Museum

1145 17th Street, NW (17th and M), Washington, DC

For more information on the exhibition, click here.

For visitor's information, click here.