Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
November 12, 2012 - February 16, 2013
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY
September 10 - December 7, 2013
Studio Museum in Harlem, NY
November 14, 2013 - March 9, 2014
Coco Fusco's Sightings (2004) photo series and a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert (2004) video featured in Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.
Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art is the first exhibition to survey over fifty years of performance art by visual artists of African descent from the United States and the Caribbean.
Featuring live performances as well as objects, Radical Presence includes more than one hundred works by thirty-seven artists. The exhibition also presents objects used in performances: costumes, scores, sculptures, and installations, which, depending on when viewers see them, serve as prompts for or traces of performances. Both the live performances and the art objects call attention to the possibilities and limitations of the active body, and the installations reflect some of the myriad ways in which museums have exhibited this ephemeral medium.
Organized by Valerie Cassel Oliver and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Radical Presence is presented in New York in two parts: Part I at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery and Part II at the Studio Museum in Harlem. For its New York presentation, the exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem is overseen by Thomas J. Lax.
