Shadows Took Shape - Emma Wingfield
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The Shadows Took Shape The Studio Museum, Harlem’s new exhibition, The Shadows Took Shape, brings together a select group of international artists, whose work creates a dialogue inspired by the the cultural movement, “Afrofuturism”. The term, coined in 1994 by writer Mike Dreary and inspired by the revolutionary artist and musician Sun Ra, seeks to address Pan-African themes and concerns regarding race and identity in the face of twentieth-century technoculture. The connections between Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism focus on interactions with the unknown and the ‘other’, while encouraging the artists to interact with their own, often difficult, histories and racial identity in new ways, creating alternative re-imaginings of the past, present, and future. The Shadows Took Shape brings together over sixty works or art, in a variety of different media, from artists living and working all over the world. This clearly isn’t an exhibition dealing exclusively with African-American issues, but instead, addressing such concerns on a global scale. The works of art seem to transcend notions of fiction and non-fiction and attempt to embrace new alternative futures rooted in present day complexities. This begins with the work of Kilunaji Kia Henda, whose series of photographs are amongst the first seen when entering the exhibition. A native to Angola, Kia Henda explores it’s postcolonial history in order to address larger questions of technology and modernism. In Icarus 13 (2008), Kia Henda uses documentary photographs to chart the mythical “first journey” of Apollo 13. The viewer is presented with segments of Apollo’s journey. Its structural base, illuminated lift off, and ultimate mission abortion commingled within images of familiar, at least to the artist himself, landscapes and buildings. The series provides an alternative way of envisioning a historical past while mirroring possible futures. Cyrus Kabiru creates a series of eyeglass sculptural works combined with photographic documentation of Kabiru modeling the eyeglasses himself. Kabiru constructs the sculptures from materials found on the streets of Nairobi; the common African artistic tradition of ‘found objects’. The eyeglasses take on a mask-like quality, resembling ‘traditional’ African masks, displayed in most art museums today. However, In The Shadows Took Shape, the glasses hang on the wall next to the photograph of Kabiru modeling them. Similar to other African mask traditions, the eyeglasses are used to alter Kabiru’s appearance and highlight otherworldly characters. However, the metal material used to construct these sculptures creates a futuristic presence, hinting at Afrofuturistic tendencies. Wayne Hodge’s work, Android Negroid #12 (2012), also addresses altered appearance, while exploring historical issues of race and desire . His collages of figures bring together a series of fragmented science-fiction based images, which he re-combines, and layers over one another. He is interested in the representation of the black subject as spectacle. In Android Negroid #12, Hodge takes a stereotypical image of a blackface during the late-nineteenth century and collages robotic images over it, re-appropriating the definitions of post-colonialism. Over the last few years, the art world has seen a rise in new types of “culturally significant creative”, of which Afrofuturism has been at the forefront. With The Shadows Took Shape, The Studio Museum has successfully provided new opportunities for artists of African descent to
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Transcript of Shadows Took Shape - Emma Wingfield
The Shadows Took Shape
The Studio Museum, Harlem’s new exhibition, The Shadows Took Shape, brings together a select group of international artists, whose work creates a dialogue inspired by the the cultural movement, “Afrofuturism”. The term, coined in 1994 by writer Mike Dreary and inspired by the revolutionary artist and musician Sun Ra, seeks to address Pan-African themes and concerns regarding race and identity in the face of twentieth-century technoculture. The connections between Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism focus on interactions with the unknown and the ‘other’, while encouraging the artists to interact with their own,
often difficult, histories and racial identity in new ways, creating alternative re-imaginings of the past, present, and future.
The Shadows Took Shape brings together over sixty works or art, in a variety of different media, from artists living and working all over the world. This clearly isn’t an exhibition dealing exclusively with African-American issues, but instead, addressing such concerns on a global scale. The works of art seem to transcend notions of fiction and non-fiction and attempt to embrace new alternative futures rooted in present day complexities. This begins with the work of Kilunaji Kia Henda, whose series of photographs are amongst the first seen when entering the exhibition. A native to Angola, Kia Henda explores it’s postcolonial history in order to address larger questions of technology and modernism. In Icarus 13 (2008), Kia Henda uses documentary photographs to chart the mythical “first journey” of Apollo 13. The viewer is presented with segments of Apollo’s journey. Its structural base, illuminated lift off, and ultimate mission abortion commingled within images of familiar, at least to the artist himself, landscapes and buildings. The series provides an alternative way of envisioning a historical past while mirroring possible futures.
Cyrus Kabiru creates a series of eyeglass sculptural works combined with photographic documentation of Kabiru modeling the eyeglasses himself. Kabiru constructs the sculptures from materials found on the streets of Nairobi; the common African artistic tradition of ‘found objects’. The eyeglasses take on a mask-like quality, resembling ‘traditional’ African masks, displayed in most art museums today. However, In The Shadows Took Shape, the glasses hang on the wall next to the photograph of Kabiru modeling them. Similar to other African mask traditions, the eyeglasses are used to alter Kabiru’s appearance and highlight otherworldly characters. However, the metal material used to construct these sculptures creates a futuristic presence, hinting at Afrofuturistic tendencies.
Wayne Hodge’s work, Android Negroid #12 (2012), also addresses altered appearance, while exploring historical issues of race and desire . His collages of figures bring together a series of fragmented science-fiction based images, which he re-combines, and layers over one another. He is interested in the representation of the black subject as spectacle. In Android Negroid #12, Hodge takes a stereotypical image of a blackface during the late-nineteenth century and collages robotic images over it, re-appropriating the definitions of post-colonialism.
Over the last few years, the art world has seen a rise in new types of “culturally significant creative”, of which Afrofuturism has been at the forefront. With The Shadows Took Shape, The Studio Museum has successfully provided new opportunities for artists of African descent to
examine their futures while grappling with identity and racial issues of their past. The Shadows Took Shape is on display at the Studio Museum Harlem until March 9, 2014.
