Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt
THE KITCHEN | MAY 24, 2019 – JUNE 15, 2019 By Nicholas Heskes
Organized by Whitney ISP Curatorial Fellows, Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu, the group exhibition Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt (A.A.H.D.H.) addresses very plainly a number of fascinating problems concerning art history and what belongs in an art exhibition. Centered around the various definitions of the word "haunt"–– "haunts" (familiar places), "haunting" (the memory or trace of something absent), and "haunting" (in the sense that struggles of the past reoccur) ––it is three exhibitions in one. It is centered around the work of Minnie Evans (1892–1987), an African American artist from North Carolina who began painting in her forties after receiving the call to "draw or die" by a mysterious vision. Her work was first exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, curated by her long–time friend Nina Howell Starr (1903–2000). Along with a number of other African American artists marked as "outsider" and "folk" Evans was given a solo show in the lobby of the Whitney museum. These lobby exhibitions, beginning in 1971, were the result of a feigned effort by the museum to support artists of color. They refused to change any of their managerial staff to reflect this new mission, hiring not one expert on the subject, not even as an advisor. Evans's paintings are reframed by an adjacent screening of the 1991 dance collaboration Praise House, directed by Julie Dash and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, originally inspired by Evans's life story. An interactive display of copies of original documents detailing the controversy between the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and the Whitney museum over the lobby exhibitions is included behind Praise House. Finally, a number of contemporary artists that cannot be defined simply as gallery artists were selected to contribute. These include: DOG WHISTLE (2019) by shawné michaelain
holloway, whose video/performance work lies somewhere between the prestigious art institution and the world of sex work and clubbing; Félix Gonzáles Torres's "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner) (1990); Asif Mian's nylon polypropylene carpet titled Diffuse Ghostly, Sieve and Weave(all 2019) on the subject of his father's unsolved murder in Texas in 1998, with photographs by his mother Shahnaz Mian; Guadalupe Rosales's All That Can Happen (2019), an "aching archive" of ephemera collected from different places, and artifacts of Rosales's experience with the murder of her cousin, it aims to understand archiving as indifferent to institutions; and Julie Tolentino's THE O TOUCH (For N, G, S) (2019) another archive with "disss-co" queer playlist, it is a haunting of sound.
This ambitious exhibition is overwhelming, from the verbose scholarship by the curators in the exhibition catalog to the intricacies of each individual piece and performance. On the subject of haunting, the rather unwelcomed ghost of Jacques Derrida's "hauntology" –– his critique of presence in Husserl, Plato, and Heidegger –– lurks in the background of the exhibition's title and catalog. However, A.A.H.D.H has marked off a different origin beside these very European ideas. The exhibition seems set on creating a loose hauntology, claiming that specters have always already been at the heart of American history.
At the end of Praise House, the message "DRAW OR DIE" scrawled in an open book lingers on screen before fading to credits. Taking this call to action seriously would be what separates fine art from "folk art." Representing angels, far away kingdoms, images of Christ, and mysterious languages, Evans's drawings give the impression of a supersensible reality overlaying this one. Based necessarily on magic and faith rather than aesthetics, the drawings were talismans that she
carried around and redrew once worn away.i In a sense the world of Minnie Evans haunts the world of museum exhibitions and contemporary artists, marking one of many points along a lineage of visionary African American art. In another sense her work, like so much art, is too unwieldy to rest idle for a viewing public. Mosquito Bombs (1943) for example represents a dream she had as a child "about airplanes before I knew what they were, dropping bombs. I dreamt it was war. So when I saw the first airplane I trembled." The edges of the canvas are frayed from being carried around in a magazine. Her work is too personal for aesthetics, tied so much to her physical security. Set in relation to Evans's paintings is an installation by Green– Wood Cemetery documenting the names of 224 orphans resting in unmarked graves in the "Lot for Colored Children or the Colored Orphan Asylum," now renamed the "Freedom Lot." Notably, the only marker is for the white matron of the asylum Mary Stockdale. "Draw or die" has another meaning here: to draw is to leave a trace of one's existence. The hand written names in the "lot book" stand as proof of the orphans' existence after no monuments remain for them. Each piece in the exhibition is an example of a desire to memorialize the existence of what has been unfairly forgotten, destroyed, and excluded. This is an impossible task for an art exhibition, yet an attempt is made to acknowledge that exhibitions are only slivers carved out of a dense world.
i "I Am Getting Ready for My Haunting", A.A.H.D.H Curators
THE KITCHEN | MAY 24, 2019 – JUNE 15, 2019 By Nicholas Heskes
Organized by Whitney ISP Curatorial Fellows, Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu, the group exhibition Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt (A.A.H.D.H.) addresses very plainly a number of fascinating problems concerning art history and what belongs in an art exhibition. Centered around the various definitions of the word "haunt"–– "haunts" (familiar places), "haunting" (the memory or trace of something absent), and "haunting" (in the sense that struggles of the past reoccur) ––it is three exhibitions in one. It is centered around the work of Minnie Evans (1892–1987), an African American artist from North Carolina who began painting in her forties after receiving the call to "draw or die" by a mysterious vision. Her work was first exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, curated by her long–time friend Nina Howell Starr (1903–2000). Along with a number of other African American artists marked as "outsider" and "folk" Evans was given a solo show in the lobby of the Whitney museum. These lobby exhibitions, beginning in 1971, were the result of a feigned effort by the museum to support artists of color. They refused to change any of their managerial staff to reflect this new mission, hiring not one expert on the subject, not even as an advisor. Evans's paintings are reframed by an adjacent screening of the 1991 dance collaboration Praise House, directed by Julie Dash and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, originally inspired by Evans's life story. An interactive display of copies of original documents detailing the controversy between the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and the Whitney museum over the lobby exhibitions is included behind Praise House. Finally, a number of contemporary artists that cannot be defined simply as gallery artists were selected to contribute. These include: DOG WHISTLE (2019) by shawné michaelain
holloway, whose video/performance work lies somewhere between the prestigious art institution and the world of sex work and clubbing; Félix Gonzáles Torres's "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner) (1990); Asif Mian's nylon polypropylene carpet titled Diffuse Ghostly, Sieve and Weave(all 2019) on the subject of his father's unsolved murder in Texas in 1998, with photographs by his mother Shahnaz Mian; Guadalupe Rosales's All That Can Happen (2019), an "aching archive" of ephemera collected from different places, and artifacts of Rosales's experience with the murder of her cousin, it aims to understand archiving as indifferent to institutions; and Julie Tolentino's THE O TOUCH (For N, G, S) (2019) another archive with "disss-co" queer playlist, it is a haunting of sound.
This ambitious exhibition is overwhelming, from the verbose scholarship by the curators in the exhibition catalog to the intricacies of each individual piece and performance. On the subject of haunting, the rather unwelcomed ghost of Jacques Derrida's "hauntology" –– his critique of presence in Husserl, Plato, and Heidegger –– lurks in the background of the exhibition's title and catalog. However, A.A.H.D.H has marked off a different origin beside these very European ideas. The exhibition seems set on creating a loose hauntology, claiming that specters have always already been at the heart of American history.
At the end of Praise House, the message "DRAW OR DIE" scrawled in an open book lingers on screen before fading to credits. Taking this call to action seriously would be what separates fine art from "folk art." Representing angels, far away kingdoms, images of Christ, and mysterious languages, Evans's drawings give the impression of a supersensible reality overlaying this one. Based necessarily on magic and faith rather than aesthetics, the drawings were talismans that she
carried around and redrew once worn away.i In a sense the world of Minnie Evans haunts the world of museum exhibitions and contemporary artists, marking one of many points along a lineage of visionary African American art. In another sense her work, like so much art, is too unwieldy to rest idle for a viewing public. Mosquito Bombs (1943) for example represents a dream she had as a child "about airplanes before I knew what they were, dropping bombs. I dreamt it was war. So when I saw the first airplane I trembled." The edges of the canvas are frayed from being carried around in a magazine. Her work is too personal for aesthetics, tied so much to her physical security. Set in relation to Evans's paintings is an installation by Green– Wood Cemetery documenting the names of 224 orphans resting in unmarked graves in the "Lot for Colored Children or the Colored Orphan Asylum," now renamed the "Freedom Lot." Notably, the only marker is for the white matron of the asylum Mary Stockdale. "Draw or die" has another meaning here: to draw is to leave a trace of one's existence. The hand written names in the "lot book" stand as proof of the orphans' existence after no monuments remain for them. Each piece in the exhibition is an example of a desire to memorialize the existence of what has been unfairly forgotten, destroyed, and excluded. This is an impossible task for an art exhibition, yet an attempt is made to acknowledge that exhibitions are only slivers carved out of a dense world.
i "I Am Getting Ready for My Haunting", A.A.H.D.H Curators