{"id":10667,"date":"2021-11-04T12:13:08","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T12:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=10667"},"modified":"2021-11-04T18:47:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T18:47:48","slug":"galerie-myrtis-exhibiting-black-art-at-the-venice-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=10667","title":{"rendered":"Galerie Myrtis: Exhibiting Black Art at The Venice Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Galerie Myrtis: Exhibiting Black Art at The Venice Biennale<\/h3>\r\n
By Shantay Robinson<\/pre>\r\n
The Venice Biennale, which dates to 1895, was established by the Italian King and Queen of the time. The first exhibition was seen by 224,000 visitors. Originally designed to celebrate Italian artists, a \u201cby-invitation\u201d system was adopted to reserve a section of the exhibition for foreign artists.<\/p>\r\n
In 1997, Robert Colescott was the first African-American man to represent the U.S. at the Biennale. Next year, Simone Leigh will be the first African-American woman to represent the U.S. at the Biennale. The 2022 Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is titled The Milk of Dreams,<\/em> and, according to her curatorial statement, it aspires to be an optimistic exhibition that \u201ccelebrates art and its capacity to create alternative cosmologies and new conditions of existence.\u201d It will question how humans are changing. The artists in the exhibition are asked to imagine a posthuman condition that challenges the universal ideal of the white, male \u201cMan of reason.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
By invitation of the European Cultural Centre-Italy, Galerie Myrtis is the first black-owned gallery to be invited to participate in the Biennale-affiliated exhibition Personal Structures: Time, Space, and Existence.<\/em> This historic moment is predated by the 2020 racial reckoning the world experienced. Myrtis Bedolla, owner and founding director of the gallery, is not taking it lightly. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be less about what white people think about black people. It\u2019s going to be strictly about how we envision ourselves. We are the dictators here, the provocateurs determining what we want the future existence of blackness to be,\u201d she says.<\/p>\r\n
Bedolla states that she encountered a representative from the European Cultural Centre (ECC), a cultural organization concerned with \u201chumanity and about the overall state and direction of our world,\u201d during her participation at SCOPE Art Show, Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018. Since then, the ECC has monitored the gallery\u2019s activities. They contacted Bedolla to present an exhibition proposal for the Biennale in 2020 to which she assembled an advisory team of her mentors, including Dr. Lowrey Stokes Sims and Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, among others. Together, they explored the black experience, which led them to the subject of Afrofuturism that she says is \u201crooted in time, time travel, and space travel that is taking you from where you currently stand, your current state of existence, to a utopian future.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Afrofuturism is Black Art, as it specifically deals with the black experience throughout the African diaspora and even through space and time. One of the premises of Afrofuturism is that it reinterprets the heinous past Africans throughout the diaspora have endured, and refashions it while exploring predictions for a more perfect future. Because of the uprising in 2020, we can assume that the curators of the Biennale wanted to include Black Art\u2014art that is essentially about the black experience.<\/p>\r\n
An Afrofuturist manifesto, as Bedolla proposes, is \u201cmanifest in black consciousness and Afrofuturist philosophy of freedom and self-determination.\u201d The manifesto fits squarely in the Biennale\u2019s theme, as it challenges the white male \u201cMan of reason\u201d universal ideal and offers another determination\u2026one steeped in the black experience from a black perspective.<\/p>\r\n
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\u201c[Afrofuturism is] defined in many ways. It\u2019s a philosophy. It\u2019s a theory. It\u2019s a concept. The way in which I define it is it allows black people to claim agency over blackness. It\u2019s where we are able to use our imagination and interpret, based on our history, what is happening today, our present, and looking toward our future through imaginative concepts and different technologies.\u201d\u00a0\u2013Myrtis Bedolla<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
The Galerie Myrtis exhibition for the Venice Biennale is titled, The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined<\/em>. Bedolla explains, \u201cAs a manifesto, it\u2019s a declaration of what we would like to see in our future, like justice and peace. And living in a world that is harmonious and one that respects the black body. So it is to be imagined. And what can be imagined can certainly be realized.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Myrtis Bedolla, Image courtesy photographer Grace Roselli, \u201cPandora\u2019s BoxX Project\u201d #graceroselli #pandorasboxxprojec<\/p><\/div>\r\n
The term Afrofuturism was coined by cultural critic, Mark Dery in 1993. Dery asks, \u201cCan a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?\u201d Per the exhibition abstract, Bedolla doesn\u2019t see the black past as being rubbed out because it is present in the art, music, and literature that black people have created.<\/p>\r\n
Afrofuturism in the visual art context is evident in the work of historic artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and scores of contemporary visual artists, including Sanford Biggers and Wangechi Mutu. The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined<\/em> responds to Dery\u2019s question by asserting, \u201cBlack people will not only be imagined but realized\u2013rooted in African traditions, composed in its polyrhythms, and storied in the lexicon of the African-American experience.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined<\/em> will feature artists represented by the gallery, including Tawny Chatmon, Larry Cook, Morel Doucet, Monica Ikegwu, M. Scott Johnson, Delita Martin, Arvie Smith, and Felandus Thames. Bedolla selected the artists whose work, process, ideas, and concepts she believes would be compelling within the strictures of the proposed exhibition. \u201cIt was a very difficult process to narrow down the selection because my roster of artists is so strong,\u201d she says. The cohort of artists range in age (from their 20s to their 80s), artistic media, and perspectives.<\/p>\r\n
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Tawny Chatmon “Then She Said, ‘I Never Asked You To Worship Me'”, 2020 24k gold leaf, 12k gold leaf, Acrylic on Archival Pigment Print 40 x 26\u2033 Framed: 53.5 x 39 x 4 \u2033 Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Myrtis<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Tawny Chatmon celebrates the beauty of black children; Larry Cook examines how urban culture and incarceration systems become entwined through photography; Delita Martin offers new narratives on the power of women; and Arvie Smith transforms the history of oppressed and stereotyped segments of the African-American experience. \u201cWe\u2019re going to examine it through various means and forms that are going to be defined and redefined based on the artists\u2019 interpretation,\u201d Bedolla notes.<\/p>\r\n
The exhibition will be nuanced, as are black people. Bedolla states, \u201cWhat I mean by the nuances is our experiences as black people. We are not a monolith, right? Our experiences vary on the position that we hold in society. We\u2019re going to examine what those experiences are. They\u2019re going to be perceived by the artists, but they will be dimensional.\u201d Through these dimensions, we\u2019ll see how sculpture, photography, and painting all work to depict the experiences of the diverse group of artists presented in the exhibition using art to explore the politics of race and culture.<\/p>\r\n
The artists, who are all creating new work for the exhibition, will imagine futuristic visions of an egalitarian society that emancipates the viewer from the Eurocentric lens. While imagining that alternative society, \u201cthe artists will look at the historic Afro-diasporic past,\u201d according to Bedolla. Given the importance of the conceptual presentation, in addition to its varied media, people will have to take pause and reflect on the issues addressed.<\/p>\r\n
Part of the mission of this exhibition is to engage the Afro-Italian community and members of the African Diaspora, who make up a percentage of the 600,000 visitors to ECC events.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cWe wanted to embrace and acknowledge them and interact in a way that was more impactful than just putting art on the wall,\u201d Bedolla says. She proposed that the featured artists come up with ideas for workshops and lectures that will create cultural exchange programs that extend beyond the Biennale.<\/p>\r\n