Black Is, Black Ain鈥檛
06.27.2009 - 10.17.2009
Black Is, Black Ain鈥檛 took its title from Ralph Ellison鈥檚 Invisible Man and features 26 artists whose work offers glimpses into one of the most timely and complex issues in contemporary American culture: race and 鈥渂lackness.鈥
The exhibition explores a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition brought together works by black and non-black artists whose work together examined a moment where the cultural production of so-called 鈥渂lackness鈥 is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.
Artists in the exhibition include: Terry Adkins,聽Edgar Arceneaux,聽Elizabeth Axtman,聽Jonathan Calm,聽Paul D鈥橝mato,聽Deborah Grant,聽Todd Gray,聽Shannon Jackson,聽Thomas Johnson,聽Jason Lazarus,聽David Levinthal,聽Glenn Ligon,聽David McKenzie,聽Rodney McMillian,聽Jerome Mosley,聽Virginia Nimarkoh,聽Demetrius Oliver,聽Sze Lin Pang,聽Carl Pope,聽William Pope.L,聽Robert A. Pruitt,聽Randy Regier,聽Daniel Roth,聽Joanna Rytel,聽Andres Serrano,聽Hank Willis Thomas, and聽Mickalene Thomas.
This exhibition is curated by Hamza Walker and organized by The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, with additional support from the Woods Fund of Chicago.For generous support of this exhibition and the 2009-2010 exhibition series, the Artspace gratefully acknowledges the Richard J. Stern Foundation, the H&R Block Foundation, the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and Boulevard Brewing Company.
