ART CITIES:N.York-Grief and Grievance, Art and Mourning in America

The intergenerational exhibition “Grief and Grievance-Art and Mourning in America” brings 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 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.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: New Museum Archive

In 2018, the New Museum invited Okwui Enwezor to organize “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America”. Around that time, Enwezor was also developing a series of public talks for the Alain LeRoy Locke Lectures at Harvard University focused on the intersection of Black mourning and white nationalism in American life as articulated in the work of contemporary Black American artists. Since he began work on the project, Enwezor had expressed a desire to open the exhibition in proximity to the American presidential election, as a powerful response to a crisis in American democracy and as a clear indictment of Donald Trump’s racist politics. Although the COVID- 19 pandemic has delayed the opening of the exhibition, the works included in the exhibition speak powerfully to America’s past, present, and future. Comprising all three main exhibition floors of the New Museum, as well as the Lobby gallery and public spaces, the works included in the exhibition represent cross-disciplinary approaches that incorporate methods of documentary film and photography, experimental filmmaking, performance, and social engagement alongside traditional artistic mediums like painting, drawing, and sculpture. The exhibition comprises diverse examples of artists exploring American history from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to issues of police violence in the United States in the 1990s and today. Although the overlapping themes of the exhibition are woven throughout the exhibition, each gallery floor builds off one of three historical cornerstones that link the experience of mourning to moments of political action and engagement across American history: Jack Whitten’s “Birmingham” (1964), Daniel LaRue Johnson’s “Freedom Now, Number 1” (1963-64), and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Procession” (1986). The presence of performance and music as spaces for community mourning and remembrance, as seen in the works of artists and performers including Rashid Johnson, Okwui Okpokwasili , and Tyshawn Sorey has also been vital to the conception of the exhibition. Another key theme visible throughout the exhibition is the use of abstraction as a strategy for confronting or mediating moments of historical violence or social upheaval, as in the contributions of artists such as Mark Bradford, Ellen Gallagher, Jennie C. Jones, and Julie Mehretu. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, intensified discussions about the circulation of images of racial violence, death, and mourning in the digital age have also figured into the work of younger artists across a variety of forms. Many artists working today have built upon a tradition of confronting media representations of institutional violence and commensurate protest movements. One important aspect of the exhibition is the inclusion of Glenn Ligon’s major public work “A Small Band” (2015), which Enwezor had commissioned for his Venice Biennale in 2015. In this piece, Ligon presents three words (blues, blood, and bruise) rendered in white neon tubes and black paint. These words were uttered by a young black teenager, Daniel Hamm, in 1964, when he and his friend Wallace Baker were arrested in New Yotk for a crime they did not commit and beaten by the police. Emblazoned across the façade of the New Museum, Ligon’s bright band of words will remain on view at the Museum for an entire year thanks to a collaboration with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Participating Artists: Terry Adkins, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Beasley, Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Melvin Edwards, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Charles Gaines, Theaster Gates, Ellen Gallagher, Arthur Jafa, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, 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

Info: Conceived by Okwui Enwezor, The New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, Duration: 17/2-6/6/2021, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 12:00-18:00, Thu 12:00-21:00, www.newmuseum.org