After commissioning “the first gesture”of change from Mahama, the institution reopened with a trio of shows by Black artists. Alongside solo exhibitions for the octogenarian US sculptor Melvin Edwards and the young Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo, Tschabalala Self ispresenting an installation of her signature painted and collaged Black figures.
Edwards’s retrospective opened last year at the Fridericianum in Kassel and will travel to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2026. Each iteration is different, with Bern bringing in “contributions” from the artist’s friends and influences to give “a flavour of all the things that orbit around Mel”, Fokianaki says, from American histories of slavery and segregation to the Civil Rights Movement, to his later engagement with Africa. In addition to the well-known Lynch Fragments and other sculptures welded out of barbed wire and chains, the show includes vibrant works on paper, in which Edwards used metal scraps as stencils for spray-paint and watercolour.
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