GROUNDBREAKING
Out of Africa Three global curators discuss the artists who epitomize the diversity and vibrance of the African diaspora.
Assistant curator at the Perez Art Museum Miami
In 2016, emerging artists of color have pushed the limits of conceptual art and representation. Three artists in particular question our relationship to technology and self-representation, portray the dynamics of hybridity, and address politics through practices such as skin bleaching—phenomena that define our contemporary moment: Ebony G. Patterson Ebony G. Patterson has had a great year, with a commission for the São Paulo Biennial and a solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, proving that her groundbreaking aesthetic captivates both national and international audiences. (The hit TV series Empire also showcased her work.) Born in Jamaica, Patterson is known for her meticulous, highly decorative large-scale works that radiate color in images portraying Caribbean and American experiences of blackness. She came to prominence with her critically acclaimed series Gangstas for Life (2007–09), depicting contemporary Jamaican dancehall culture, notions of masculinity, and the current skinbleaching trend in the Caribbean. Martine Syms Recently debuting her first solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Martine Syms captivated our eyes this year, embodying her ethos as a conceptual entrepreneur. Also a participant in Made in L.A. 2016, the Hammer Museum biennial in Los
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Angeles, Syms explores the relationship between media images and lived experiences in association with how business and culture transform our contemporary life. She produces lectures, videos, objects, photographs, and publications addressing Afrofuturism, language, queer theory, and Internet culture, and sometimes alludes to Twitter or YouTube in her works. Commissioned by the New Museum for its 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, Syms’s A Pilot For A Show About Nowhere uses the premise of a pitch for a TV sitcom to produce a larger discussion of the dynamics of representation in American culture as well as viewership and its social codes. Firelei Báez At the end of 2015, Firelei Báez was awarded the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting and had her first solo exhibition, at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. This year she received the Chiaro Award and has used a variety of high-profile residencies to prepare for her upcoming solo show at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Báez makes highly intricate largescale drawings informed by science fiction, Caribbean folktales, female subjectivities, and the connections between the experience of race in the Caribbean and in the US, as exemplified by her series Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test (2011–12). In this work, she centers her attention on two absurd tests for racial categorization, exploring identity in hybrid cultures.
top right: Ebony G. Patterson, …they were just boys (…when they grow up…), 2015-16. bottom right: Firelei Báez, Palmas for Martí (novias que no esperan), 2016.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAYMOND ADRIAN (ORTIZ); COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONIQUE MELOCHE GALLERY (PATTERSON); COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GALLERY WENDI NORRIS, SAN FRANCISCO (BÁEZ)
MARIA ELENA ORTIZ,