Art
In Conversation
Jennie C. Jones with Ann C. Collins
Perception comes gradually, when the mind is quieted enough for awareness to seep in, and even then, it is never fixed. Mingling visual and aural work, lineage and legacy, Jennie C. Jones: Dynamics infuses the Guggenheim Museum with minimalist abstractions and tonal callings. The first Black woman to have a solo exhibition in Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic rotunda, Jones throws open long-held narratives of art history, expanding the tracings of inspiration and influence to include both Black and female histories. Mining a vein of work in which paintings stand as sculptures, music is rendered in graphic statements, and color becomes a source of light, Jones’s work throws us off balance, requires us to shift and reposition ourselves in response to her slow reveals. As her gentle harmonics roll down from the oculus, the space itself seems to sway and expand.
In Conversation
Faith Ringgold with Tschabalala Self
Faith Ringgold is an important artist who is currently the focus of two exhibitions in New York City. Her show at the New Museum, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Gary Carrion-Murayari, and Madeline Weisburg, surveys her impressive six decade career, while the exhibition at ACA highlights the artist’s work in print mediums. On the occasion of these exhibitions, Tschabalala Self spoke with Faith Ringgold about growing up in Harlem, the roles of activism and writing in an artist’s practice, and the importance of seeing art from all cultures and places. Ringgold’s long time friend and gallerist, Dorian Bergen, joined Ringgold for the conversation.
In Conversation
Meg Webster with Julie Reiss
Meg Webster’s concerns for the natural world have defined her career as an artist. She creates sculptures made of salt, earth, sand, grass, and other natural materials, and large-scale installations that provide an opportunity for interacting with nature and better understanding its processes. During the installation of her current exhibition at the Judd Foundation, she sat down with Julie Reiss to discuss the shifting meaning of her artworks, their dialogue with minimalism, and their timeliness.
In Conversation
Koho Yamamoto with Amanda Millet-Sorsa
We discuss the life and work of Japanese American artist Koho Yamamoto through several conversations over sushi and tea in her apartment above Bar Pitti on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village, in anticipation of her centennial birthday in April 2022. After seeing the artist’s first big show at the Noguchi Museum, Koho Yamamoto: Under a Dark Moon (May 2021), I started as her student to learn Japanese calligraphy. Though she is a dedicated teacher of traditional sumi-e subjects and has taught for over fifty years, her own work stems from the ideas and thoughts developed in Postwar Abstract Expressionism in New York, where she has lived since 1945 after being held in the internment camps in Utah during WWII.
In Conversation
Eugenio Viola with Francesca Pietropaolo
This interview with the Italian-born and Bogotá-based curator Eugenio Viola, who curates the Italian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (opening later this month), took place on February 4, 2022. He from his home in Bogotá and I from mine in Venice, we connected via Zoom to talk about the possibilities and challenges of curatorial practice, the resilience of art in exploring memory and trauma, and the “necessity” to maintain a “despite-everything” optimism at this difficult historical juncture. Our dialogue encompassed Viola’s socially engaged projects at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotà, where he works, and his upcoming undertaking in Venice, with some incursions into his formative experiences in Naples.
