ART CITIES:N.York-Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson is known for repurposing objects and artifacts to lead people to see them in a different way. His installations typically create new contexts for displaying art and artifacts found in Meum Collections. The changes in context create changes in meaning, highlighting the politics of erasure and exclusion. Wilson’s creative process often involves community outreach and research in the cities where he produces his projects.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Fred Wilson’s solo exhibition “Afro Kismet” features his most recent body of work originally produced for the 15th Istanbul Biennial (16/9-12/11/17).The roots of the exhibition go back to 1992 when Wilson presented “Re:Claiming Egypt”, at the 4th International Cairo Biennale and to 2003 when Wilson represented the United States at the 50th Venice Biennale with “Speak of Me as I Am”. As Fred Wilson says in an interview “When I was researching the history of the Africans of Venice for the Biennale, it became clear to me that their presence had something to do, at least in part, with Turkey. While I was obsessed with the Africans that inhabited not only the paintings but also other aspects of Venetian culture, I noticed that many of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paintings with Africans in the city scenes also had Turks in them”. Through his research, Wilson developed a conceptual basis for the Istanbul project in which he contextualized pieces from the city’s Pera Museum’s Orientalist collection with new and existing works of his own. “Afro Kismet” looks to a controversial aspect of Turkish heritage and culture, focusing on the history of black people in the region through vintage prints and handcrafted items. The work brings to mind the delicate issue of the Ottoman slave trade*, and the role of Moors** (Afro Turks) in Turkish society today. For the exhibition, Wilson reconfigures “Afro Kismet” which includes two chandeliers, two monumental Iznik*** tile walls, four black glass drip works, and a globe sculpture, as well as installations and vitrine pieces that gather cowrie shells, engravings, photographs, a Yoruba mask, and furniture, among other objects that the artist discovered in his frequent trips to Istanbul throughout 2016 and 2017. New chandeliers, included in the exhibition, combine black Murano glass with traditional metal and glass elements of Ottoman chandeliers, thus fusing two histories of craftsmanship and symbolizing the complex relationship between the Venetian and Ottoman Empires. In the two Iznik tile walls, the Arabic calligraphy translates in one case to “Mother Africa” and in the other “Black is Beautiful”. The new globe sculpture titled “Trade Winds” refers to the complex and tragic global trade in human beings. The juxtaposition of recent works by Wilson with works from the 19th Century – including Orientalist paintings with African subject matter, not only questions notions of universal knowledge and truth, but also sheds light on a history not thoroughly examined. By combining contemporary objects and museum-quality artefacts, Wilson challenges the assumptions of exhibition methodology and art historical scholarship.

* From the 16th Century, Egypt and most of the Arabian Peninsula were under Ottoman control and in the 17th century, the Ottomans took over the Fezzan region. That gave them greater access to African slaves. Trading Africans as slaves was banned in 1847 with the closure of the slave market in Istanbul and 10 years later it was forbidden to import black slaves throughout the Ottoman Empire.

** The term “Moors” refers primarily to the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Moors initially were the Berber autochthones of the Maghreb.

*** Iznik is a town in western Anatolia (historically known as Nicaea). The town became a major center with the creation of a local faïence pottery-making industry during the Ottoman period in the 16th Century, known as the İznik Çini.

Info: Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, New York, Duration 10/7-17/8/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-16:00, www.pacegallery.com