by Basil Roman
A show now at the Guggenheim Museum and will be closing in a few days, is a must-see for those of you who can make it in the next couple of days. Curated by Ashley James, a Jamaican, and the first black full-time permanent curator at the Guggenheim, has taken over the rotunda of the museum with the show; Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility presents a work of art that features partially or hidden figures, thus positioning them at the edge of visibility. In this art context, the common phrase going dark is understood as a tactic whereby artists visually conceal the body to explain a key tension in contemporary society. It desires to be seen, and it desires to be hidden from sight.
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Artists in the show articulate ‘going dark’ by way of formal strategies that may include darkening methods like shadowing, rotating the body, novel material, printing methods and post-production tools that blur or brighten – some of the most recent work that will be seen will draw upon digital technology such as chroma key green or blue screen. These were moved fluidly between figuration and abstraction, and many of the artists inventively manipulated color and light also to obscure optical perception, challenging the very biology of vision.
The New York Times critic Aruna D’souza suggests, appropriately, that the show asks what it means to be seen and to see each other, especially when the seeing takes place across racial and other forms of differences, what does it mean, especially for people of color, to be hyper-visible and subject to increased surveillance, while at the same time erased from the field of vision, forgotten in social and political landscapes. How does looking at each other through these layers of stereotyping and misunderstanding distort our perception of the world, if being visible is a trap is there solace found in invisibility?
These are the questions of the day and the show in a subtle and also in a forceful way raises and answers some of these questions. The show occupying the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, Going Dark presents more than 100 works by a group of 28 artists, the majority of whom are blacks and more than half of whom are women. While most of the work dates from the 1980s to the present, a selection was created in the 1960s and 1970s by three iconic artists David Hammons, Faith Ringgold, and Charles White, suggesting that the development of conceptual art during these decades launched new pathways of expression that laid the groundwork for contemporary artists tackling the age of visibility today.
Ashley James, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, joined the curatorial department in 2019. Her work merges curatorial practice with an academic background rooted in African American studies, English literature, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality studies. Before joining the Guggenheim, James served as senior Curator for Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the lead curator for the museum presentation of Souls of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 2018 to 2019. Organized by Eric Mark, Lemme Walk Across Your Room 2019, and co-curated John Edmonds a Sidelong Glance 2020-21. James also served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Drawing and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, where her work focused on the groundbreaking retrospective of Adrian Piper 2018 and Charles White 2018 to 2019, and has held positions at Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she co-organized an exhibition Old Volumes book art from Allan Chasanoff Collection. She has contributed essays and research for books, magazines, and catalogs, including publications on Charles White, Palmer Hayden, and Howardena Pindell.
James holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in English Literature and African Studies. Both of James’ parents are Jamaican and she is proud of her Jamaican heritage. The show closes on April 7th, too soon. We urge anyone who has the opportunity to make the time and effort to see the show. It is well worth it and an experience to take away.
