Exhibition Review: Mining the Archives
© Alanna Fields, Canyons Beyond Time, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Assembly Projects
Written by Jan Alex
History can be tricky to pin down. How we define and interpret it is inevitably personal, dependent on our private and family histories just as much as official narratives. In “Mining the Archive,” currently on display at Yancey Richardson Gallery, the malleable nature of history — its potential for reinterpretation, complication and personalization — is something to be celebrated and explored. Co-curated by Racquel Chevremont, partner of featured artist Mickalene Thomas, the exhibit marks another noteworthy achievement in Chevremont’s illustrious curation career. Moreover, it showcases her deft eye for bringing widely different artists together into a cohesive collection.
Featuring new work by nine African American artists using diverse approaches to collage and drawing from a wide array of public and private archives, this remarkable group exhibit offers little in the way of easy interpretation. Anchored in the visual vernacular of photography, this diverse collection challenges the ideas of beauty, identity and memory while examining the relationships between the personal, the political and the material. Throughout the exhibit, familiar imagery comes together to form new and unexpected interpretations. By recombining images and materials into new creations, the artists reveal the web of associative ideas that form our culture and history.
© Mickalene Thomas, Jet Blue #20, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Take, for example, the glamorous and complex collages by artist Mickalene Thomas. Her new mixed-media works are assembled with a wide variety of materials, including fiberglass mesh, rhinestones and Swarovski crystal fabric, and draw on her research into the monthly calendars of Jet Magazine, published from 1951 to 2014 to promote the beauty and self-reliance of African American women as well as chronicle the civil rights movement. Evading an easy visual reading, Thomas’ work examines the issues of Black identity and femininity through the melding of art history and pop culture.
Another artist on display whose work complicates the relationship between the political and the personal is Sadie Barnette. Her work is equal parts a reflection of her own family history and the broader history of oppression and resistance in America. In Malcolm X Speaks, the artist’s manicured hand and glossy pink nails hold her father’s copy of the activist’s landmark text. Barnette’s father Rodney was a notable member of the Black Panther Party who helped found the organization’s chapter in Compton, California. The photograph results in the infusion of a serious political subject with a touch of feminine expression, showing the intricate relationship between the political and the private.
Todd Gray, Embodiment of the Imperial Ideal, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and David Lewis Gallery.
In some cases, the work on display complicates and reinterprets not just personal but larger collective histories. Todd Gray’s large-scale photographic assemblages, displayed in the artist’s unique and overlapping wooden frames, explore the complex relationship between Colonialism, slavery and the African diaspora. Mined from Gray’s extensive archive of photographs, including sublime Ghanaian landscapes and classical architecture, this work juxtaposes familiar images to create entirely new points for historical reference.
A celebration of reexamining history and the medium of collage, “Mining the Archive” is a substantial and provocative exhibit. The diverse methods and processes utilized by the artists result in a collection of truly unique images. Unified by a consideration of the historical, the personal and the rejection of clear narrative, it’s remarkable to see such widely divergent works sing in unison.
“Mining the Archive” is on display in person at Yancey Richardson Gallery until Aug. 20 and can be viewed online at the gallery’s website.
