Racing Art, Racing Chicago

I'm from New York, so I can't say I was entirely ready for the level of racial segregation I found here in Chicago upon moving here some ten years ago. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I hadn't been here before. I've had family here for twenty-one years, did a Public Art commission years ago (when Hamza Walker was still running that program), and have shown with Rhona Hoffman Gallery for fifteen years. My traveling exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center landed at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1996, and I have done private commissions for a wide range of Chicago patrons. Long before I ever moved here with my former wife and son we had family memberships in almost all of the museums here in Chicago. In addition to watching my son's homemade parachuting contraptions fall from the tower inside of the Chicago Children's Museum numerous times, we must have seen those dolphins flip out of the big pool at the Shedd Aquarium more times than I can remember. So yes, I know a few things about Chicago. But like they say, visiting a place is very different from living in that same place.

The difference between New York's social cultural stew and Chicago's segregated social circles and mindset still takes some getting used to. Try as I may, I can't recall a museum or gallery opening, after party or dinner in New York in all the years I lived there where I was the only black face in the room. At the very least there were (in addition to whites) Latinos, Asians, and assorted of folks of indeterminate race on the scene...wherever the scene was. I know some long time denizens of Harlem are skittish about the changes long afoot there, but at a recent opening at the Studio Museum in Harlem, I'm pretty sure the racial demographic in attendance was equally skewed among all of the above ethnic groups. I doubt that I could see the same  heterogeneous group assembled at Chicago's DuSable Museum for an opening, though I confess to not being a regular habitué of that institution. And at any number of Chicago galleries on opening night the crowd is so monotonously white you would think you were at the Wonder Bread factory...unless you happen to step foot in G.R. N'namdi's gallery, where you will find a somewhat more integrated scene. 

It's been my experience that the cultural habits among blacks and whites are decidedly different. And to be sure, I'm not talking about all blacks or all whites, but those who do make the decision to frequent museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions. From my experience (and this is purely anecdotal, but after much long and serious consideration) the cultural experience for some blacks is largely one that I would liken metaphorically to a "mirroring experience" in which one engages with the art as a way on affirming (or perhaps confirming) ones sense of self, ones aspirations, or ones personal memories. Certainly visual art that clearly mirrors (or illustrates) some aspect of "the black experience" seems to resonate most successfully with a certain audience. Unfortunately this has often meant endless versions of various vernacular scenes: fan waving, big hatted black church ladies, wise doting grandmothers combing/braiding little black girls hair, black kids splashing about in open fire hydrants in the summertime, brightly colored paintings of musicians endlessly blowing loopy "expressively" rendered saxophones, and on and on. Of course these are all experiences which in and off themselves (in real life) are meaningful, and it is far from my intention to denigrate the black church or that close generational bond that makes families an important refuge. And I love black music. Hey, I'm a drummer myself. No, not at all. Rather I am questioning a way of making art that seems akin to passing through the world with a mirror held inches from ones face, and subsequently thinking that everything in the world looks just like you, and that you look the same even as things shift and change around you. Walking about in such a state, you're likely to miss the fact that removing the mirror can also change the way you look (and think).

I just happen not to think that the most interesting role art can fulfill is to merely re-present the things we already know from our everyday lives. Rather I hope to be transformed through my engagement with art; to find out something about myself I didn't know, or to leave feeling not merely confirmed, but challenged. What seems missing in much art by black artists of a certain illustrative ethnic stripe is an engagement with and acknowledgment of that big world out there that doesn't look like you but whose various conceptual and even formal devices might be useful to you. Also missing is a certain interest or insight into that vast history of discourse that determines what marks and utterances history will deem significant. I had the misfortune to find myself sitting on a jury for a local "black art" exhibit awhile back in which all of these shortcomings were on vivid display, from photographs of sunsets and flowers to the exalted black church ladies. I know some will say that history is no more than "HIS- story", but as far as I know there is no parallel universe, ie. the universes of "us vs. them" to escape to when it comes to making a significant mark in history through ones work. It calls for ambition, skill, and an awareness and grasp of the broad context in which one is working. If your work has to exist in a separate universe apart from that larger discourse in order to be legitimated or considered meaningful, then that is a problem, since powerful ideas and utterance, in whatever form, tend to hold up quite well to scrutiny from any and all comers. 

You'll excuse me if I seem to digress, but this issue of race and art has as many sides as the day is long as they say. Into this stewing cauldron of race in its varied aesthetic and social dimensions comes two show that opened recently in Chicago that attempt to engage the issue of race and art practice: "Black Is, Black Ain't" currently at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and "Disinhibition: Black Art, Blue Humor" at the Hyde Park Art Center. I am not going to attempt an in depth critical examination of these shows here. Rather I offer an opening salvo in what should become an ongoing conversation. Given the complicated relationship that the University of Chicago has long had with the (black) South Side community surrounding it, the mounting of an exhibition on its grounds--at an influential art institution-- that centers on blackness as a literal and conceptual trope would seem to be a ripe opportunity for a rich dialogue and explication on race as social and cultural phenomena. That the exhibition was curated by the Renaissance Society's (black) Education Director and Associate Curator Hamza Walker could only give the occasion even greater urgency and anticipation.

In light of the possibilities such an exhibition would seem to invoke, it seems instead to be a missed opportunity, one which favors a kind of curatorial ambiguity over clear discursive risk taking. Dealing with race in such a context can  be daunting and put one to the test as a black curator in a mainstream institution, potentially producing a bad case of curatorial nerves. Indeed my good friend Hamza seemed somewhat off his erudite game at the conversation with Menil Collection curator Franklin Sirmans held a couple of weeks ago. While Sirmans seemed to have come ready to dig into the work and the signifying and discursive aspects of the exhibition, Walker seemed more given to whimsical, pondering introspection...which might be fine in a private context or on the printed page. But it certainly didn't serve this situation or Walker (or the audience) well. Artist Kerry James Marshall was in the audience, and I am looking forward to the panel discussion with him, U of C's Darby English, Columbia College's Greg Foster-Rice, and SAIC's Kym Pinder. It'll be a much more substantial conversation I'm sure. Kerry didn't get to say anything from the audience at the Walker/Sirmans conversation, but there will be no stopping him on June 1st when he will be front and center at this panel discussion assembled in conjunction with the exhibition. The event is at 2:00, Sunday, June 1st at U of C's Kent Hall. (Kerry's dialogue with Bruce Mau at the Art Institute a few weeks back was also classic, incisive Marshall: forceful insight in the midst of hip institutional piety.)

Timed to create a dialogue with the "Black Is..." exhibition, "Disinhibition: Black Art and Blue Humor" at the Hyde Park Art Center attempts to tackle the way in which humor is used subversively in works addressing the black subject. William PopeL, who makes an appearance in "Black Is..." is here as well, making a more literal link between the two exhibitions.  This show, too, seems to be a conspicuously missed opportunity. Organized by Blake Bradford, HPAC's Education Director, the show purports to look at, "the us of humor as a critical method to forthrightly address societal taboos, prejudices, and sterotypes." Would that the execution matched the potentially engaging set of ideas behind the show. There is an interesting program of films that do take an incisive and entertaining look at the trope of humor in black cinema currently running at HPAC. Go to their website for the schedule. (www.hydeparkart.org) (Full disclosure: I am on the board of the Hyde Park Center, and was recently selected to chair its Exhibition Committee. I had no input in the show at hand.)

Both of these shows make apparent the need for continuing discourse on race, and its latest manifestation in our socioaesthetic midst here in Chicago. I also want to mention briefly two artists who I had a first look at during Art Chicago and the Next Art Fair. It was a real pleasure meeting and seeing the work of Fahamu Pecou and Dawolu Jabari Anderson, since I'd seen it previously only in reproduction. Both seemed to be making work that--with varying results and varying skill--located itself at the intersection of race, culture, and visual discourse. Anderson is part of the Otabenga Jones artists collective in Houston. Artist Torkwase Dyson was kind and astute enough to introduce me to both Pecou and Anderson. Thank you Torkwase, and thank you reader for taking the time.

Top: Carl Pope, "The Bad Air Smelled of Roses" (detail)