Art of the New Civil Rights Era
Didier William, Broken Skies: Te a mi, 2019, Acrylic, wood carving, and collage on panel, 65 x 102 inches [courtesy of the artist and James Fuentes Gallery, New York]
In January 2020, ART PAPERS reached out to a group of curators, writers, educators, and art historians, offered them an outline of the Spring 2020 issue's theme, and invited them to contribute to this dossier by selecting an artist to spotlight with a short text. The prompt called for artists whose work contributes a vital perspective on the context of contemporary civil rights discourse, with a special emphasis on artists who might not yet be highly recognizable to a broad audience.
The following artist spotlights came in answer to that call. The authors represent established, mid-career, and emerging cultural producers‚ many of whom have worked directly with the artists they chose to feature.
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Celestia Morgan
Celestia Morgan, a conceptual photographer and sculptor living in Birmingham, AL, captures systems of inequality and justice.
Chase Hall
With his paintings, sculptures, and photographs, Chase Hall has set himself on a journey to mine the gap between the intimacies of Black life and the traces of psychopathology that gives the appearance of White supremacy an uneasy palatability.
Crystal Z Campbell
Crystal Z Campbell collapses the past and present to historically contextualize the legacy of the theater and the physicality of the crumbling film as a site of destruction and fortitude.
Tariku Shiferaw
Unabashedly confronting issues related to racial identity, Tariku Shiferaw employs an obstinately formalist language of geometric abstraction in his practice to unpack the precariousness of contemporary Black life and celebrate the cultural production of Black people.
Shaina McCoy
Shaina McCoy is a Minneapolis, MN–based artist whose deeply textured paintings regularly depict Black children, families, and social scenes.
Didier William
In his painting practice, Didier William seeks to diffuse and complicate the idea of the gaze.