Artist Rashaad Newsome and DJ & Producer Twilite Tone join Hayward Gallery for the first of a four-part podcast in which they pair artists with musicians and writers for a conversation drawing on the themes of the InTheBlackFantastic exhibition.
A Public Skin
Rashaad Newsome, Joan Nelson, Bassam Al‑Sabah, Alex Olson & Alteronce Gumby
1 September – 1 October 2022
Andy Warhol’s infamous 1966 claim that anyone seeking traces of authorship in his work need only look at the surface of his paintings, sculptures, and films – “there I am. There’s nothing behind it” – is only really infamous if you think of surfaces as superficial, or of superficiality as something not worth thinking about. Superficiality is only skin deep anyway: any painting is two surfaces touching, like hands in prayer, a hidden support, and a visible outer skin. Applying the latter to the former is a matter of masking or concealment, with all the suggestive potential that brings to mind. It’s in the gap between the two that the approaches of the artists on show here come to life. The aim is not to disentangle them but to see one in terms of the other, to hold the private support and the public surface in productive tension. Painting, here, is the guiding metaphor, despite the range of media on show: its interplay of skins is the territory we’re in.
For more info CLICK HERE!
Rashaad Newsome wins the 2022 Berkeley FILM Foundation grant for his forthcoming feature link documentary, Get Your 10s.
The Berkeley FILM Foundation is a 501(c)(3) grant and educational program for independent filmmakers founded by the City of Berkeley, Wareham Development, and the Saul Zaentz Company with a mission to nurture, sustain and preserve the thriving local film community while attracting the next generation of filmmakers.
Through the artistic process of interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, Get Your 10s tells the story of how the creative and cultural productions of Black and Latinx Americans who live on the margins of society traveled across national borders. Newsome’s materials are people rather than inanimate objects, and the film follows him as he collaborates with Queer practitioners from Brazil, Japan, Ukraine, and Senegal who combine vogue with their local dance forms, culminating in a monumental performance at the Park Avenue Armory in NYC. In tandem, we see the creation of Rashaad’s artificial intelligence creation, Being, who teaches decolonization workshops combining vogue, meditation, and critical pedagogy. The film investigates how historically, Black people have functioned as technology and examines how technology can serve as a form of resistance and liberation and a threat to our civil rights. As we travel through the multifaceted artistic practice of Rashaad, we discover how art, ballroom culture, and critical thinking can unleash our collective imaginations to envision a future that holds promise for all of us.
For more info CLICK HERE!
Getting Real! For Rashaad Newsome, AI is just one device he uses in his storytelling.
To read the full story CLICK HERE!
In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery, 29 June – 18 September 2022 and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands 19 November 2022 – 9 April 2023
Myth, science fiction, spiritual traditions, and the legacy of Afrofuturism are all sampled, reimagined, and recontextualized in In the Black Fantastic.
Encompassing painting, photography, video, sculpture, and mixed-media installations, the exhibition creates immersive aesthetic experiences that bring the viewer into a new environment somewhere between the real world and a multiplicity of imagined ones. While some artists disrupt our understanding of the past, others invite us to imagine fantastical futures. In this exhibition, fantasy becomes a zone of creative and cultural liberation and a means of addressing racism and social injustice by conjuring new ways of being in the world.
In the Black Fantastic is curated by Ekow Eshun and features the artists Nick Cave, Sedrick Chisom, Ellen Gallagher, Hew Locke, Wangechi Mutu, Rashaad Newsome, Chris Ofili, Tabita Rezaire, Cauleen Smith, Lina Iris Viktor, and Kara Walker.
In the Black Fantastic is generously supported by the US Embassy London, Gagosian, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation, Victoria Miro, David Zwirner, Pilar Corrias, and Sprüth Magers.
For more info on the exhibition CLICK HERE!
To purchase a catalogue CLICK HERE!
★★★★★
‘unlikely to be a better show this year’
–Evening Standard
★★★★★
‘a magnificent experience, spectacular from first to last’
-The Observer
★★★★★
-The Guardian
★★★★
‘powerful, affecting and often very, very beautiful’
-Time Out
★★★★
‘rich and strange… visual fabulousness and flair’
-The Telegraph
NOW AVAILABLE
ISSUE NO. 27 PERFORMANCE
What does performance mean to us in a world of mediated presence? It’s easy to look at performance as a departure from authenticity, as an act of pretense. Yet every social interaction is operating on some level of performativity: from the way we text or the clothes we wear, the impression we make on others is manipulated by our conscious act of self-creation. The act of putting on a show is thus not distancing from authenticity, but it can glean us into the very heart of life, existence, and its contended truths.
Issue No. 27: Performance features 10 artists, 8 spotlight artists, and 30 emerging photographers including Rashaad Newsome, Malick Sidibé, Alec Soth, Michael Avedon, and Marilyn Minter. The issue asks what the significance of performance might mean for these individual artists’ own relationship with themselves and the world.
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Ships mid-July
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Includes: 2 Issues / Year + The Musée Digital Archive
