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Imaging a New Utopia

Baronial - Nov, 2020

Co-curated by Gwyneth Shanks and AB Brown

Imaging a New Utopia presents a semester-long program of experimental shorts, documentaries, and feature films that explore filmic futures through race, gender, sexuality, and place. The serial particularly features works that center ritual and performance, like theater, trip the light fantastic toe, voguing, and experimental music.

Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt

May 24- June fifteen, 2019

Curators: Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu

In 1975, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a solo exhibition of Minnie Evans, an creative person from Due north Carolina whose drawings and paintings were inspired by visions that she witnessed in her dreams. The exhibition was curated past her longtime friend and abet Nina Howell Starr. It was one of 11 solo shows of African American artists staged in the wake of activism by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, who criticized the Whitney's underrepresentation of black artists and curators. Then, as now, Evans's work escapes terms such as "folk art" or "outsider fine art" grafted onto it, instead producing its own internal logics.

 In 1991, Evans became the primary source of inspiration for the dance picturePraise House, directed by Julie Dash in collaboration with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder and artistic director of the trip the light fantastic company Urban Bush-league Women. Zollar recalls first encountering Evans'southward work at the Brooklyn Museum, almost probably in the 1982 exhibitionBlack Folk Art in America, 1930–1980. Zollar and Dash'south protagonist, as well equally the main grapheme of Zollar's theatrical work that inspired the film, is loosely based on their interpretation of Evans's work and biography.Praise Firm imagines Evans equally an important and, although deceased by 1991, contemporaneous artistic influence. Evans's work animates a politics of memory, inheritance, and intergenerational exchange that together create ahaunt, a frequented place, across space and time that grounds the construction of the exhibition.

In 2019, against a backdrop of cultural institutions that are ever more eager to represent certain types of "fugitive" bodies, E'er, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt proposes haunting every bit a representational illogic, an embodied and affective practice that rejects the production of user-friendly or easily read narratives. Haunting aims to redress the historical violences, absences, and omissions laden in the trappings of institutional "diversity." Instead, this exhibition foregrounds the social worlds that surround and orbit art institutions—the club, the park, the cruising space, the archive, and the cemetery—lingering on the desires, pleasures, and mournings entangled inside them.

The exhibition features works byJulie Dash,Minnie Evans,Félix González Torres,Green-Wood Cemetery,shawné michaelain holloway,Nina Howell Starr,Asif Mian,Guadalupe Rosales,Mariana Valencia,Julie Tolentino,The Whitney Archives, andJawole Willa Jo Zollar.

The Kitchen, New York, New York, U.s.

Curated through the Whitney Independent Written report Program

Photos by Jason Hirata

All That Tin Happen

May 24 at 7:xxx PM, 2019; The Kitchen, New York

Presented in conjuncture with the exhibition Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt, co-curated by Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu

Collaborating with dancer Mariana Valencia and DJ Jazmin Romero, Guadalupe Rosales created her first performance activation for the opening of Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt at The Kitchen in New York.

Rosales's commission,All That Tin Happen, included a Get-Get Box-cum-vitrine of 1990s rave, trip the light fantastic toe crew, and club ephemera, materials that were donated to the artist by friends, family members, and her broader community in E Los Angeles. The piece, like much of Rosales'south works, besides functions equally a memorial to her cousin, Ever Sanchez, who was murdered in 1996 at historic period 20.

Her piece includes numerous snap shots and formal portraits of immature people from East Los Angeles, and Mariana Valencia, performing atop the box, adopted their poses: a tiresome score that was both echo of the club and mourning ritual. During the performance, the lights in the gallery all shifted to a cobalt blue, and Jazmin Romero's audio score—a mix of Rosales'due south sis's voice recounting the nighttime of their cousin'due south murder and society beats—filled the infinite, a sonic and optic feel that sought to transform the gallery into a collective site for commemoration, conviviality, and mourning.

Rosales's functioning also included an appearance past the Klique Car club, who hosted a cake party on the street in front of The Kitchen.

The Kitchen, New York, New York

Public Bout, Green-Wood Cemetery

June one at 6:30–viii:30 PM, 2019; Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Presented in conjuncture with the exhibition Ever, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt, co-curated by Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu

The Green-Forest Cemetery is famous for its elaborate private burial lots and architecturally meaning monuments. However, its lesser expensive public lots comprise about one-half of all burials at the cemetery. As part of the exhibition Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt at The Kitchen, Green-Wood'due south Manager of Preservation and Restoration, Neela Wickremesinghe, and Director of Programs and Special Projects, Harry Weil, led a guided exploration of these sites. This newly deputed bout highlighted the "Colored Lots," 7 burying lots on the cemetery's southern border, including one for The Colored Orphan Asylum. These burial lots were recently renamed the "Freedom Lots."  Over 1,300 are laid to rest hither, making it one of the largest existing burial grounds for African Americans who lived in New York Metropolis in the concluding 2 centuries. Wickremesinghe and Weil presented this history of the cemetery based on their on-going inquiry into the social and political history of the city made legible through the cemetery's histories and archives.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

Photograph by Simon Wu

Rabih Mroué: Again we are defeated

Dec xx, 2018–Feb 23, 2020

Curators: Gwyneth Shanks and Allie Tepper

Again we are defeated presents a selection of new works by Rabih Mroué, whose exercise spans theater, performance, music, and visual art. His work explores contemporary Middle Eastern life worlds and (geo)political textile effects, drawing, in detail, from his feel of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). In this installation, the Berlin-based artist focuses on the means in which current fierce conflicts are mediated through print journalism. What images are presented and what histories are occluded?

This piece of work continues Mroué'due south project of revealing and resisting the representational politics or images of war, particularly as such images seek to document or adjure to violence in the Middle Due east and North Africa. Through selectively obscuring content culled from newspapers and engaging with the intimate and meditative act of drawing, Mroué offers his own reading of these events and another way of processing the everyday atrocities of war. Mroué has produced some 200 drawings and collages equally well every bit video on the subject, in which he serially tracks the recurring impressions of conflict. When clustered as shown here, the works create an homage to the haunting presence of the dead.

Walker Art Eye, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Photos past Bobby Rogers, courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Untitled: a procession on the borders of something that has already shifted

Co-curators Gwyneth Shanks and Sarah Lewis-Cappellari

Untitled: a procession on the borders of something that has already shifted uses fences to explore questions around privacy, private property, privilege, displacement, and belonging. Shanks, in collaboration with Sarah Lewis-Cappellari, examines what it means to laissez passer through a neighborhood, lingering in the histories, communities, materials, textures, and memories that brand upward such spaces.

Taking the form of a public program and procession through private and public spaces in Repeat Park,Untitled features the voices of invited collaborators, who include a landscape builder, an academic expert on residential zoning laws and the history of racial dispossession in Repeat Park, a Chicanx artist whose drawing practice includes portraits of East Los Angeles'due south residential landscape, and Repeat Park residents who explore their memories and connections to the neighborhood. The performance culminates in an empty lot marked for residential development, a space understood as nascent with potentiality and conflicting desires. An open space, an unbuilt—for now—infinite for speculation.

Click here for a downloadable PDF of the program notes, which includes more detailed descriptions of each collaborator.

Untitled: a procedure on the boarders of something that has already shifted was deputed by Materials & Applications for the exhibition, Privacies Infrastructures, and was funded in part through the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants and the Graham Foundation.

Curatorial Team

Devised and directed by Sarah Lewis-Cappellariand Gwyneth Shanks

Text by Sarah Lewis-Cappellariand Gwyneth Shanks

Operation GuidesDorit Cypisand Loren Fenton

Recorded speakers and additional text past Dana Gage, David Godshall, Vincent H.,Grace Lara,Manuel Lopez, Jesenia R., andGabriela R.

Boosted Performances byVincent H., Grace Lara, Jesenia R., and Gabriela R.

A Unlike Kind of Intimacy: Queer and Radical Operation at the Walker, 1990-1995

February 22 -June 1, 2018

Curator: Gwyneth Shanks

In the politically and socially polarized atmosphere of the late 1980s and 90s—fueled by the conservative mandates of the Reagan Administration and the era'southward culture wars—feminist, anti-racist, and queer performance artists achieved a newfound vocalisation and influence. Queer sexualities, subversive sex, and the experiences of artists of color were central to the work of artists like Ron Athey, Karen Finley, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Bill T. Jones, Patrick Scully, and the lesbian theater group Split Britches. These artists, among others, plant institutional back up at the Walker Fine art Heart, which championed their experimental and often politically risky work.A Different Kind of Intimacyexplores how artists performed affinity and protest, and features ephemera, video, and photographs, inviting viewers to reflect upon the aesthetic and political turbulence of the catamenia.

Walker Art Middle, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Photos by Gwyneth Shanks

Laure Prouvost in collaboration with Sam Belinfante and Pierre Droulers:They Are Waiting for Yous

Feb nine–10, 2018

Curators: Philip Bither with Gwyneth Shanks

For this world premiere, inquisitive French-built-in conceptual creative person Laure Prouvost presents her first major production for the stage. The winner of the 2013 Turner Prize, Prouvost is known for weaving together fiction and fact to create complex and humorous stories that challenge the ways nosotros create our own life histories. Expect an unpredictable yet thoroughly mannerly experimental mash-up of video work, trip the light fantastic, immersive stage décor, and choral music. Prouvost is joined by artist Sam Belinfante, renowned trip the light fantastic toe creative person Pierre Droulers—one of Belgium and France'south leading choreographers—and musicians from Minnesota and New York.

Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United states of america

Photos courtesy Walker Fine art Center, Minneapolis

Laure Prouvost: They Are Waiting for Y'all

Oct 12, 2017–Feb xi, 2018

Curators: Victoria Sung with Gwyneth Shanks

Laure Prouvost (French republic, b. 1978; lives and works in Antwerp) produces arresting moving image and sound installations in which she conflates reality with fiction and fine art with everyday life. Prouvost's environments often confound expectations through a rapid-fire succession of sound and prototype. Narrated in the artist'south soft, seductive vocalization, they are interspersed with spoken and written instructions that directly address the viewer. Combining painting, sculpture, and found objects alongside her projected images, Prouvost lures the viewer-turned-participant into an abstracted, preverbal state of consciousness from which to rediscover the joy of learning language, words, and meanings.

In 2013 Prouvost won the Turner Prize for her installationWantee, co-commissioned by Grizedale Arts and Tate Britain for the Tate's Schwitters in Great britain show that year.

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Photos courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Bouchra Ouizguen:Corbeaux (Crows)

Curator: Philip Bither with Julie Voigt and Gwyneth Shanks

Equal parts living sculpture and ecstatic performance catharsis, this work by Moroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen offers an experience both intimate and public. Presented in nontheatrical spaces with a 22-member collective of Moroccan and Minnesotan women, Ouizguen'south mystical music and movement upshot has been riveting audiences throughout the earth.

September 23, 2017
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, 12 noon
Rain Location: Walker Fine art Eye, Hennepin Lounge and Cargill Lounge

North Eatables Park, Minneapolis, 4 pm
Rain Location: Due north Eatables Recreation Centre gym

September 24, 2017
Rice Park, St. Paul, 1 pm
Rain Location: Landmark Center atrium

Walker Art Eye, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United states of america

Photos courtesy Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis