{"id":1143,"date":"2017-09-14T16:15:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T16:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackartinamerica.ndorsglobal.com\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2017-09-19T05:00:41","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T05:00:41","slug":"beverly-buchanan-ruins-and-rituals-at-spelman-college-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=1143","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Beverly Buchanan-Ruins and Rituals at Spelman College Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Through incisive considerations of site, history, biography, and portraiture,\u00a0<\/span>Beverly Buchanan (1940\u20132015)<\/u><\/span><\/a>\u00a0produced landmark bodies of work, including cast concrete and mixed-media sculptures, drawings and books, and evocative paintings and photographs.\u00a0<\/span>“Beverly Buchanan-Ruins and Rituals,”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on view September 14-December 2, 2017, at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, is the most comprehensive exhibition of Buchanan\u2019s work to date, with more than 150 objects, including sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, notebooks of the artist\u2019s writings and documentation of private performances. The exhibition emphasizes how Buchanan\u2019s work resisted easy categorization and investigates her dialogue not only with a range of styles, materials, movements and literary genres, but also with gender, race, class and identity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The exhibition features works that represent every phase of Buchanan\u2019s career including early abstract paintings such as \u201cCity Walls\u201d and Black Walls,\u201d which were influenced by her former mentors, Norman Lewis and Romare Bearden. It also includes site-specific work represented in dialogue with the architectural and archaeological sculptures that she called \u201cFrustula,\u201d from a term meaning fragments or broken-off pieces. Buchanan\u2019s intimate photographic portraits will be shown alongside key examples of her best-known works, including small sculptures of southern vernacular dwellings or shacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The exhibition also includes a three-channel video installation, \u201cJune 10\u201319, 2016,\u201d documenting four of Buchanan\u2019s existing site-specific earthworks in locations across the American southeast and filmed after the artist\u2019s death. Buchanan\u2019s practice is informed by the histories of the locations where she lived and worked, including New York, Georgia and Florida. The artist explored themes of memory and historical injustice, monument and ruin, as well as the forms and histories of southern vernacular architecture and site markers and meeting places.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n