The Brooklyn Rail

In her first solo museum exhibition in Chicago, vanessa german invites viewers to attune to a heart-forward consciousness, to receive her intent to heal historic and communal traumas. Featuring a new body of semi-precious stone sculptures paired with fragments from a class german co-led with Zachary Cahill (one of the exhibition’s curators) as part of her fellowship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the exhibition questions the role of care and creativity in navigating institutional and ideological Eurocentricity. Part colloquia, part consciousness-raising incantation enshrined in rose quartz, lapis lazuli, citrine, hematite, and metal, At the end of this reality there is a bridge—the bridge is inside of you but not inside of your body. Take this bridge to get to the next _______, all of your friends are there; death is not real and we are all dj’s., curated by Mike Schuh, Stephanie Cristello, and Cahill, juxtaposes material investigations from german’s itinerant studio practice with the physical and emotional archives of students from a nine-week investigation on Paraäcademia: Art, Spirituality, and Social Healing. Drawing upon the potential of students “othered” by societal forces, german foregrounds the value of “loving students responsibly, in their wholeness and without judgment” as a precondition for her curricula. There is something fundamentally radical, and partly disquieting, in situating the psyche of the self-taught artist within a framework of the “Akademie.” Gaining critical acclaim through the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2015), the Jacob Lawrence Award (2017), and the Heinz Award (2022), the artist accepted the world as her university, postulating from early years the position of emotional intelligence and spirituality in her understanding of aesthetic theory. Through the winter of 2023, german and Cahill invited students to reimagine the scope of their syllabi, cultivating a classroom where the personal weighed in on the pedagogic.

To the left of the gallery's entrance, a darkened chamber holds the rules of engagement. A blown-up, ruled letter from a student lists “Ingredients necessary for the creation of a new YES world.” A sharp three-sided wooden pedestal pierces the corner of the space in THE SOUL IS A LIBRARY I (two tables) (all works 2024). “Visible objects of magic”—deodorant, a grandparent’s wristwatch—perform the emotional register of protection charms or totems of survival in individual vitrines. A low-lying wooden table embedded with a video shows students introspectively drawing under a blue winter sun, navigating a scroll of paper across a long classroom table. A partial remnant of the collective drawing hangs in a frame; the rest has been folded, rolled, and migrated into armatures of german’s sculptures placed in the central gallery. Before exiting the left ventricle of the heart of the exhibit, a black checkered table compiles “student notes” in the form of several golden clay impressions, no larger than the contour of each student’s palm.

A ritual synthesis of intuited elements saturates german’s sculptures. Initially, working entirely with found materials, she questions herself: “Did I find this, or did it find me?” Touched by the vocabulary of divinatory practices, the Milwaukee-born artist time travels, slipping between multiple consciousnesses while rooted in the truth of the present. West African tribal sciences such as those of the Dogon tribe, Afrofuturist Black liberatory scholars, and everyday people who come into communication with the artist inform german’s understanding of bodily (and spiritual) birth and decay. Using the day-to-day sediment of consciously being in-world, german seems unafraid of the inevitable psychic wounding that encircles the experience of Otherness in the West. In the pressure chamber of the central gallery, crystalline assemblages form figurative abstractions, memorializing instances of Black liberation and self-deliverance.

Heart-Opener (pyramid) channels a light-message from Sun Ra. A reflective pyramidal house seats a blue lapis record player playing a halcyon stellated icosahedron, transmitting german’s recollection of a visit to Kings Canyon as a child. She recollects the greatness of giants—sequoia trees, her prodigious mother, and seeing but not recognizing Sun Ra. Below, an encrusted rose quartz head spins on the ground. A mannequin hand draws chains from its crown in Chicago Altar of Love inspired by the ride-share driver who told me how to make it in Chicago, she says: Don’t be Afraid. Keep Your Eyes Open. Each title is self-explanatory verse. Here, an altar to the inherent goodness of strangers invites viewers to lean into consciously protecting the kindness in other fellow human beings.

A bantam lapis blue head rests in an opposite corner of the rose quartz-hued expanse. Atop the right ear, a large hunk of rose quartz weights the central axis of its jaw. Turned on its side, it rests on a gold and white bugle-beaded pillow with a blue rubberized glove dangling from the edge onto a mirrored pedestal. Altar of Grief and Transformation from the place where I was scammed by humans out of $700 one night in chicago when I had a mean toothache and the pain had blinded my common senses. communicates a palpable sense of anguish overcome by a rare brand of forgiveness embodied by the artist, as german constantly finds ways to transmute inner and outer wounds through her spirit.

Speaking on the inclination of critics, curators, and gatekeepers in identifying queer, femme, and trans artists as “healers,” german is unphased by the existence of an art world altogether. “I am experiencing a dynamic shift in consciousness as a whole,” she clarifies. “It’s a treasure when a wounded soul makes their healing seen and known. Coming into wholeness is an act of resistance, a resistance to the divisiveness that forces us to self-define outside of categories.” Linking a shared responsibility to protect one another from the violence of Neo-imperialism and scientific racism, the artist claims sovereignty through the intuitive engagement of lived materials. Inviting community members to emancipate themselves from colonial traumas in THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH (2022) at the Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College, german incorporated communally sourced words and objects into the armature of rose quartz assemblages. Audiences and participants who kept a piece of the healing crystal later returned these to german in unsuspected ways, signaling an alchemical connection between the artist and her viewers. These instances gave rise to a series of commemorative crystal power figures, including portraits of George Floyd and Elijah McClain, in an attempt to “answer the cries for a mother.” She says with grief, “It is incumbent on each heart that hears these cries to recognize and answer to them.”

Commemorating Black physicists in the orbit of the university, the artist came upon the work of Dr. Katrina Miller. Since Miller was one of a small few Black women to earn her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago, german sought to learn more about her during her fellowship at the Gray Center. To share in Miller’s experience of being celebrated while feeling consumed by the hierarchies of the institution, german’s Love and Power and Hope and Grace; An Ode to The Soul of Dr. Katrina Miller shows the face of the young physicist adorned in lemon yellow citrine with piercing silver quartz pupils. Her body, a yellow and blue tempest of streamers, connects to an orange A-frame ladder sourced from the Gray Center’s toolshed. A single twisted copper wire extends down to the ground, holding a ring given by Miller to the artist for the intent of the sculpture. Among listed materials is “the open heart,” “the weary heart,” “the way it is to be chosen,” “scars that no one can see,” “endurance,” “fearlessness,” and “healing.” Surfacing coded messages in another commemorative sculpture, Dr. Massey and The Nature of the Known Universe, german conjures a portrait of the founder of the National Society of Black Physicists in polished black hematite encircled by a basketball hoop weighted with chandelier crystals.

Outside of the obligatory question of ethical quartz mining practices from ecologically precarious countries like India, Pakistan, and Brazil (nearly all crystals in the exhibition are sourced from mines in Arkansas), it is impossible to drown out the disparity between a 480 billion dollar (and growing) wellness economy in the US, and german’s unwasteful curiosity for activating material and immaterial healing technologies situated in the human and earth body. What portals lie between conscious and unconscious life experiences that could restore an embodied healing of our collective sensibilities? How do we create the tools we need to combat political divisiveness? As an alchemist, german presents paraäcademic ideas with an understanding of how the psyche effectively gives shape to the worlds we live in. Situating herself outside of institutional rationale, german challenges audiences to unmask sources of their disempowerment under the spectral presence of healing crystals. Landing the weighted paradox of Queer, Trans, Black Utopianism in the imperturbable context of the institution, german produces a discourse from the margins of art, science, and religion toward necessary futures.