Life in Turnabout

Robin Rice on Visual Art

by Robin Rice

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Published: Jan 23, 2008

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There are at least three good reasons to see "From Taboo to Icon: Africanist Turnabout." It is not déjà vu all over again. It includes artists at different stages of their careers, familiar names and relative unknowns. It aims high.

On the downside, maybe curators Sophie Sanders and Shervone Neckles chose too many artists — more than 30. The show is almost cacophanous but perhaps only a babel of voices could express the diversity of ideas growing out of a series of symposia at Temple University.

The nearly 70 works include photographs, such as Lonnie Graham's unromanticized portrait The Dogon Hunter from Mali, and fiber art, such as professional boxing judge Melvina Lathan's meticulous quilts dedicated to boxers and history. Earl Fyffe's poetic, extemporaneously constructed scrap wood Shanty is among many notable examples of assemblage. Theodore A. Harris's collages manipulate print imagery in ways that pleasingly belie a deeper political critique.

The near absence of traditional painting may reflect postcolonial theory though these words do not appear in the catalogue. Colonization involves insights into changing power relationships. The discussion of postcolonialism encompasses categories such as gender, in which women are described as "colonized" by men. "Taboo to Icon" is about ethnic identity in contexts that include the body, cultural and symbolic spaces, and African ancestry.

Not surprisingly, colonization and cultural identity are compelling sources for artists. In Pepón Osorio's video Mangual, the setting and visual elements literally frame a doomed attempt to remove superimposed, artificial "whiteness." Projected against a Caravaggio-like black ground, within a traditional, wall-mounted gold-leafed picture frame, the European origins of the image of a man (not the man himself) are evident. The man futilely attempts to wash chalky color from his darker skin. His face and gestures express despair.

Work dealing with the body as a contested site (or sight) are among the most thought-provoking. Ayanah Moor's digital prints of female dancers in music videos are well-presented but limited. In contrast to Moor's critique of women who believe their bodies are the best they have to offer, Deborah Willis's photographs celebrate female bodybuilders who proudly enact similar values. In Hank Willis Thomas's Scarred Chest, a flotilla of Nike logos appears where once we would have seen traditional identity-based scarification.

Like artists of the 1980s, such as Lorna Simpson and Janine Antoni, Sonya Clark confronts us with the intimacy of real physicality. Pearls of Wisdom, a necklace of felted black human hair and tiny silver Ethiopian beads, is beautiful. Is it intended, like Simpson's hair photographs, to confront the ambivalent relationship some women of color have with their hair?

A different and unsettling intimacy is conjured up by Heather Marie Davis-Jones's installation Domestic Bliss. Mops and other implements have been modified by modeling a penis on the handle ends, perhaps postulating that the dual obligations of the "housewife" might be combined. This work is aptly juxtaposed with Terry Boddie's Foreday Morning, an elegant wall vignette of kite-like sperm swimming toward a black-and-white egg.

There is a noteworthy use of paper. Ruby Amanze covered a huge sheet with what seem to be strips of black typewriter ribbon impressed with sinister phrases like "white picket fence where the hatred is." Maya Freelon Asante's assemblage of colored tissue paper is joyous and spectacular. Tissue implies both fragility and the physiological fabric of tactility. Using similar materials very differently, Franky Laudé's heap of large translucent paper spheres is simultaneously delicate and architectonic.

Ethnicity is not the subject of Nadine Patterson's Lick Film, but another aspect of identity is central. The short piece alludes to every artist's quasi-romantic involvement with his or her materials and technology. The artist's work rhythms and gestures are reflected in the spins and sinuous gestures of dancer Jonathan McDermott. He is shown mostly in silhouette but his red and yellow op-artish '70s shirt projects the vibrating energy of film and maybe even a hint of Africanist aesthetic.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

From Taboo to Icon: Africanist Turnabout

Through Feb. 10, Ice Box, Crane Building, 1400 N. American St., 215-232-3203, cranearts.com.

 

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