Davis and I finally saw Sanford Biggers’ show “Codeswitch” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts yesterday. It’s a survey of his decade-long work using quilts as canvas and building on several visual and artistic traditions, notably the work and inspiration of the Gee’s Bend quilters, hip hop, Sun Ra, Japanese wood prints, and more. It really is thoughtful and beautiful work. Take a look:
Of equal importance to seeing the show, I think, is purchasing the catalog. I know this isn’t a new idea, but it’s a recent insight of mine. A well-done show catalog provides some much needed context for the work. Instead of only going to see the exhibition, you’re now able to have a more in-depth exploration with the work by enjoying other interpretations and perspectives. For me, I’m at that point when I want to have a deeper engagement with an artist’s work than simply saying, “I saw the show and it was dope!” Which this show is. But what am I learning? What are the ideas that Sanford is engaging with? And, more importantly, what can I learn from that?
In the case of Sanford’s catalog, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the foreward was done by the inimitable cultural critic Greg Tate. I love what he does to contextualize both the what and why of Black folks’ codeswitching:
The music had to carry your people through enforced silence and terror when there was no other vehicle around. And thus did your people cross over into the twentieth century, having already invented in the nineteenth the four major code systems they’d need to break on through to the other side of the twenty-first. This thing they call the blues, first-a code form for converting sorrow into cathartic joy. Then there were the spirituals, a code for emancipating the spirit from the planet and the plantation. A code named jazz fed mind body and soul with elevating forms of abstract thought, and out of the conglomeration of them all came this thing they’ll call rock and roll, a code for unleashing pent-up sexual energy on a world more in terror of that force within the people than anything else. In case of fire break open.
For those of you in the NY Metro area, Codeswitch runs through April 5. Btw, here’s a profile of Sanford that writer Siddhartha Mitter did in advance of the show’s opening for the New York Times.
And while you’re there: Definitely check out Shaun Leonardo’s recently opened show, “The Breath of Empty Space.” His exhibition is a series of drawings that “critique how mediated images of systemic violence against Black and Brown young men in contemporary American history have shaped our fear, empathy, and perception. Created between 2014 and 2019, the works trace high profile stories of lives ended or forever altered by systems of law enforcement from the 1970s to today.”
For me, this second of two images of Laquan McDonald is the most haunting of the show.
Charcoal on paper,
2016.
Courtesy of Richard Betts.
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