WASHINGTON DC - 2019 marks thirty years since the cancellation of The Perfect Moment: Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. And in this new perfect moment, this appealing anniversary wrapped neatly in black and white, it is easy to draw a line directly from the present back to one point in the past. However, when time is compressed as such, what happens to the in-between? From the Margins aims to examine the foreclosure presented by Mapplethorpe’s legacy by pivoting towards Glenn Ligon’s response to Mapplethorpe. In this way, Ligon’s Notes On the Margins of the Black Book serves as a guide to generating critique.
In Ligon’s incisive work, photographs from Mapplethorpe’s infamous Black Book are paired with texts taken from writers such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as quotes from everyday patrons to New York City bars and clubs. In his response to Mapplethorpe, Ligon reveals the inextricability of identity, race, sex, history, and politics. From the Margins views Ligon’s work as critique, but more specifically critique as care. Works on view such as Naima Green’s Pur·suit updates Catherine Opie’s Dyke Deck to better reflect the lived queer experience of today, with 54 card-sized portraits of queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people. Stanley Stellar, whose acclaimed photographs of New York City men spanning over four decades, continues to capture vulnerability and sensuality in all their endless manifestations.
From the Margins speaks to the function of critique, the authority of public reception, and the spectacularization of an artist into a mythos. Critique is presented without the condemnation of finality but rather as a form of care and collaboration. How can we better understand the history of representation when we re-examine Mapplethorpe’s position? The artists in the show both take up and refuse Mapplethorpe’s ethos in the service of making space. The exhibition considers the importance of filling in the gaps in our visual vocabulary, challenging the viewer to reconsider the legacy of representing those on the margins and the role of critique.
In addition to the sixteen artists on view, From the Margins includes a resource library and a fully illustrated catalog with over ten contributors.
Exhibiting Artists: Peter Clough, John Edmonds, Benjamin Fredrickson, Naima Green, Florian Hetz, Sara Lusitano, Carlos Motta, Matthew Papa, John Paradiso, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Stanley Stellar, Matt Storm, Gerardo Vizmanos, Shen Wei, and Shikeith.
Resource Library: Raw Meat Collective, GenderFail, Kink Magazine, Aperture, Original Plumbing, Camilo Godoy/Amigxs, and Cakeboy Magazine.
Catalog Contributors: Andy Johnson, Caitlin Chan, James Huckenpahler, Megan L. Weikel, Jessica Layton, Terence Washington, Che Gossett, Josh T Franco, Adriana Monsalve of Homie House Press, Aubrey T.A. Maslen, Martina Dodd, and Ravon Ruffin.
See full exhibition info here.
“Please, throw the book at me. Work gets done in the shuttling between reading and making. Books are criticism packaged. As an artist with a PhD in art history, I work surrounded by the books gathered throughout years of study. My books are annotated with marginalia and stains from paints and adhesives, marks of an ongoing back and forth with the critical voices recorded on the pages. I value a studio visit from a living breathing being, but these voices are much more frequent and intimate. After a few hours spent making, I hunger to revisit the books.
Lately, I have been working intensively with snake imagery and rupestrian materials. This has caused me to return to two longtime critics. Philosopher Gloria Anzaldúa reteaches me lessons about snakes and my body. Her critical lessons sharpen performance work in progress and give me clues as to how I might interact with a sculpture in production at the time of this writing. Her words make me feel both small and brave, which is the sliver where good critique should leave one to continue working. In my most treasured of his writings, Aby Warburg, the eccentric art historian, provides a view of snakes at work in indigenous American visual culture from a social position far from my own. In fact, my place in this world is closer to that of the Northern New Mexican image-makers and ceremonialists than it is to his. Watching him watching them bullies me into critical self-reflection: Am I to be brown or art historian? Ritualist or artist? It does not always feel possible to be both. Warburg reminds me of the dangerous beauty of our discipline, and that I am capable of reiterating epistemological violence with every performative gesture, with every stroke of the pen.
Does it matter that the books from these writers—and stacks and stacks of others—are not conscious of my critiques of them? They can hurt my feelings and they can affirm my intuitions. Being in my studio with them feels as complicated and mutual as being there with any person. Often more so. The books have different voices at different times, shifting meanings responsive to whatever lays on the studio table on a given day. Never knowing if it will sting or praise, I remain hungry and grateful for the input of these bound critics. Please, throw the book at me. “