30 Americans

After three years, 30 Americans, a historic rereading of the work of 30 African-American artists from the Rubell collection, re-opens at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The UN's declaration of 2011 as the Year for People of African Descent has reignited the debate regarding mixed cultures. In the case of those of African ancestry, thinking has taken on a densely articulated dimension as the models related to their diaspora inevitably intersect with their modernity.

The sociologist Paul Gilroy, in his long essay entitled The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness has provided us with one of the most comprehensive texts on the subject. Gilroy outlines a critical analysis of the topic of race with the aim of tracing the history of transatlantic black culture as viewed through literary, poetic, artistic and musical production. The author is careful to emphasize its syncretic aspect and at the same time vigorously distances himself from both primitivism and from weak exotic models. In the arts, one of the most enlightening exhibitions on the subject was produced last year at Tate Liverpool; stemming from Gilroy's book, the show, Afro Modern: Journey through the Black Atlantic, which is based on current ethnographic research, focused on 140 works divided into thematic sections highlighting the impact and influence of different black cultures—African, Caribbean and South American—on Western art and vice versa.

Mickalene Thomas, <i>Baby I Am Ready Now,</i> 2007. Acrylic, rhinestone and enamel on wooden panel. Diptych, 72 x 132 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami.<br />
Group portrait above, L to R: Rashid Johnson, Nick Cave, Kalup Linzy, Jeff Sonhouse, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Barkley L. Hendricks, Hank Willis Thomas (blue shirt in the front), Xaviera Simmons, Purvis Young, John Bankston, Nina Chanel Abney, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas (sitting in front), Kerry James Marshall, and Shinique Smith. Photo Credit: Kwaku Alston — Mickalene Thomas, *Baby I Am Ready Now,* 2007. Acrylic, rhinestone and enamel on wooden panel. Diptych, 72 x 132 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
Group portrait above, L to R: Rashid Johnson, Nick Cave, Kalup Linzy, Jeff Sonhouse, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Barkley L. Hendricks, Hank Willis Thomas (blue shirt in the front), Xaviera Simmons, Purvis Young, John Bankston, Nina Chanel Abney, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas (sitting in front), Kerry James Marshall, and Shinique Smith. Photo Credit: Kwaku Alston

Afro Modern starts off from the work of artists active in the early decades of the last century such as Aaron Douglas, a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance—a prolific painter, whose paintings proudly claimed their African heritage and legitimately aspired to a model of modern African American life. The sentiment of double consciousness was experienced not only by authors who experienced the diaspora firsthand but also by many who lived in states colonized by Europeans. In 1970, Uche Okeke, Nigerian artist and emblematic figure of Nigerian independence, gave birth to the Nsukka Group—which was later joined by El Anatsui and the younger Olu Oguibe—proposing a modern African cultural model that could distance itself from aggressive Western influence and at the same time point the way towards Natural Synthesis, understood as a confrontation between two realities in the making.

Rashid Johnson, <i>The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood),</i> 2008. Lambda print, Ed. 2/5, 69 x 55 1/2 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami — Rashid Johnson, *The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood),* 2008. Lambda print, Ed. 2/5, 69 x 55 1/2 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami

Among those who have worked with African American contemporary art for many decades are Mera and Dan Rubell, exceptional collectors who began to buy work by African American artists in the early '60s and now boast the Rubell Family Collection, one of the world's richest collections. Its headquarters is in Wynwood in Miami, for some time now a renowned fashion and art district, where the most powerful international brands are competing for high-priced historic industrial spaces. The Rubell Collection is housed in a brand new building on NW 29th Street next door to the famous Galerie Perotin (representing such artists as Maurizio Cattelan and Paola Pivi).

The Rubell is located near the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Little San Juan, also known as El Barrio, which began illegally and where people do not take often kindly to all these glamorous changes that have led to an increase in prices of essential goods.

If the predominant medium is the traditional canvas, quite widespread since it is a private collection, the most striking aspect of the exhibit content is the absolutely shared conceptual basis of the pieces. It is clear that the artistic research always points to the politics of identity just as most of the pieces do not conceal the conflict with the theme of double consciousness.

Carrie Mae Weems, <i>Descending the Throne (from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried series),</i> 1995-1996. Two monochrome C-prints with sand-blasted text on glass in artist frames, Ed. 6/10, Diptych, 26 1/2 x 58 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami — Carrie Mae Weems, *Descending the Throne (from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried series),* 1995-1996. Two monochrome C-prints with sand-blasted text on glass in artist frames, Ed. 6/10, Diptych, 26 1/2 x 58 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami

In December 2008, Mera and Don Rubell presented 30 Americans to the public; it was a review containing the re-reading the work of 30 African-American artists selected from their collection. The show has enjoyed an excellent reception by the public so that original edition reopened at the North Carolina Museum of Art last March 19 (until September 4, 2011). 30 Americans is a sort of display based on the works of authors who are well-placed on the art market and who are quite well known in the United States because already present in shows at such institutions as the Studio Museum in Harlem and Renaissance Society, both very specific to the work of black artists.

John Bankston, <i>Rehearsal,</i> 2004. Oil on linen, 78 x 96 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami — John Bankston, *Rehearsal,* 2004. Oil on linen, 78 x 96 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami

If the predominant medium is the traditional canvas, quite widespread since it is a private collection, the most striking aspect of the exhibit content is the absolutely shared conceptual basis of the pieces. It is clear that the artistic research always points to the politics of identity just as most of the pieces do not conceal the conflict with the theme of double consciousness. In the paintings by Mark Bradford, Iona, R. Brown, Renee Green and John Bankston, the tension that emerges from the images is transformed not only into a j'accuse but also into a series of pressing questions whose answers are slow to arrive.

Renée Green, <i>Between and Including, Set A (Akerman to Bogeyman),</i> 1998. Black-and-white framed photographs, framed texts and painted wall. 14 panels, dimensions variable; 10 panels, 6 1/2 x 8 7/8 in. each; 4 panels, 8 7/8 x 6 1/2 in. (22.5 x 16.5 cm) each. Rubell Family Collection, Miami — Renée Green, *Between and Including, Set A (Akerman to Bogeyman),* 1998. Black-and-white framed photographs, framed texts and painted wall. 14 panels, dimensions variable; 10 panels, 6 1/2 x 8 7/8 in. each; 4 panels, 8 7/8 x 6 1/2 in. (22.5 x 16.5 cm) each. Rubell Family Collection, Miami

Freedom without Love by Bradford is an appeal, an interior search, the habitual image of a reality that comes to blows with the void. Xaviera Simmons's photographs are always set in a context reminiscent of African landscapes both when she depicts a woman sitting in an arid and steppe-like forest as well as when she shoots a little girl dressed in rags walking in a lush greenery with a sack hanging on a stick thrown over her shoulders. Carrie Mae Weems, committed to fighting global thinking regarding diaspora-based and Afrocentric models, offers a vigorous historical and iconographic analysis starting from a reflection on slavery in the United States.

Iona Rozeal Brown, <i>Untitled (after Kikugawa Eizan's "Furyu nana komachi" [The Modern Seven Komashi]),</i> 2007. Acrylic and paper on wooden panel, 12 x 14 5/8 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami — Iona Rozeal Brown, *Untitled (after Kikugawa Eizan's "Furyu nana komachi" [The Modern Seven Komashi]),* 2007. Acrylic and paper on wooden panel, 12 x 14 5/8 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami

30 Americans perhaps traffics too heavily in referential clichés, and is perhaps a bit repetitive, but it clearly shows how the cultural relationship—and its complex dynamics—of many African American artists with their places of origin cannot leave space to a different way of making art that is not inherent in their history.

In a conversation a few years ago, the artist Kori Newkirk, one of the most incisive authors on the topic of identity, proposed a series of successful sculptural installations hastily named "Curteins" which represented bare landscapes using beads—the plastic beads with which Africans decorate their hair. I asked him if this fashion was still very popular in the U.S. The answer was that in fact it was no longer so popular but that it was intimately tied to a typically African image and ecology of belonging. In the project at Celebration of Blackness, promoted by the Mobile Museum of Art, Carl Pope, a true outsider who chose not to tie himself to any private gallery and who only works with public spaces to avoid any possible mediation with the market in order not to limit his freedom of expression, wrote on several large billboards penetrating and simple phrases like, "Black is the distance between dusk and dawn," or "The Absence of color is still a color."

Poster by Carl Pope (printed by Hatch Show print), 2006

Last fall, on the occasion of his participation in the Liverpool Biennial, when it was pointed out to the artist from Benin that his work was still closely tied to Africa, Meschac Gaba—who for more than twenty years has lived in Holland where he arrived with a scholarship in 1990 and where as a first project he created the Musée d'Art Africain made of common objects used every day in the life of the inhabitants of the capital Cotonou—replied, "Je suis bien sure an artiste africain."

30 Americans

After three years, 30 Americans, a historic rereading of the work of 30 African-American artists from the Rubell collection, re-opens at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

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