Freestyle was a contemporary art exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem from April 28-June 24, 2001 curated by Thelma Golden with the support of curatorial assistant Christine Y. Kim. Golden curated the works of 28 emerging black artists for the exhibition, characterizing the work as 'Post-Black'. The latter is a term she generated along with artist Glenn Ligon as a genre of art "that had ideological and chronological dimensions and repercussions. It was characterized by artists who were adamant about not being labeled as 'black' artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness." [1] Freestyle was her first major project at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the first of an ongoing series of 'F' themed exhibitions including Frequency, Flow and Fore. The most recent iteration of the series was 2017's Fictions.
At the time of the exhibition, Thelma Golden had recently resigned from a position at the Whitney as their first black curator, accepting the position of deputy director at The Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) during a time of renovation for the museum. Ten years prior to her new role at the SMH, she had worked as a curatorial intern for the same museum. Golden credits her time at the Whitney Museum working on the 1993 Whitney Biennial as: "my curatorial education really on every level: my education about working with artists, my education about commissioning work, my education about understanding the museum context, my education about the notion of audience and how it operates". [2] She also curated the Whitney's 1994 Black Male exhibition, thinking of the black male as a subject through the works of a multi-cultural roster of artists and the 1998 Bob Thompson exhibition, which she described as being "the first major survey of a mid-century African-American artist in a long time." [2]
Golden selected "Freestyle" artists based on the quality of her studio visits and her resonance with the artists themselves, referring to herself as someone who deals with artists pushing the definition of American art rather than someone who deals with objects. Her vision for The Studio Museum in Harlem was a place where-in exhibitions would allow space for critique and questions to be explored. [3] Golden was particularly interested in exploring how black artists could shape a contemporary blackness after the activism of the 1960s, the essentialist Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, the theoretical multiculturalism of the 1980s and global expansion of the late 1990s. [4] The work that followed revealed a prevailing theme of black individuality, reflecting Golden's understanding of the exhibition title, referring to 'freestyle' as "the term which refers to the space where the musician (improvisation) or...the dancer (the break) finds the groove and goes all out in a relentless and unbridled expression of the self." The exhibition was funded by Philip Morris Companies, INC, the Peter Norton Family Foundation and the exhibition fund: Jacqueline Bradley & Clarence Otis, Fifth Floor Foundation and Joel Shappiro. [4]
The artmakers of "Freestyle" experimented with digital media and sound as well as culture-specific materials like hair pomade and curling papers to explore social, political, sexual and ethnic issues. From painting and drawing to sculpture, installation and new media, the work reveals the artists' exposure to both Eastern and Western thought. [1] Some works included:
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a modern and contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was originally founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a prominent American socialite, sculptor, and art patron after whom it is named.
Renee Cox is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist and curator. Her work is considered part of the feminist art movement in the United States. Among the best known of her provocative works are Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Raje and Yo Mama's Last Supper, which exemplify her Black Feminist politics. In addition, her work has provoked conversations at the intersections of cultural work, activism, gender, and African Studies. As a specialist in film and digital portraiture, Cox uses light, form, digital technology, and her own signature style to capture the identities and beauty within her subjects and herself.
Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. Based in New York City, Ligon's work often draws on 20th century literature and speech of 20th century cultural figures such as James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Jean Genet, and Richard Pryor. He is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, with a new one on the same site. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African Americans, members of the African diaspora, and artists from the African continent. Its scope includes exhibitions, artists-in-residence programs, educational and public programming, and a permanent collection.
Post-black art is a category of contemporary African American art. It is a paradoxical genre of art where race and racism are intertwined in a way that rejects their interaction. I.e., it is art about the black experience that attempts to dispel the notion that race matters. It uses enigmatic themes wherein black can substitute for white. Some suggest the term is attributable to the 1995 book The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson.
Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness. From 2017 to 2020, ArtReview chose her annually as one of the 10 most influential people in the contemporary art world.
Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.
Lyle Ashton Harris is an American artist who has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation art and performance art. Harris uses his works to comment on societal constructs of sexuality and race, while exploring his own identity as a queer, black man.
Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist who works in painting, print, sculpture, and poetry. After graduating from Boston Latin School, Kemp received a BA/BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and an MFA from Stanford University.
Laylah Ali (born 1968) is a contemporary visual artist known for paintings in which ambiguous race relations are depicted with a graphic clarity and cartoon strip format.
Christine Y. Kim is an American curator of contemporary art. She is currently the Britton Family Curator-at-Large at Tate. Prior to this post, Kim held the position of Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before her appointment at LACMA in 2009, she was Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York. She is best known for her exhibitions of and publications on artists of color, diasporic and marginalized discourses, and 21st-century technology and artistic practices.
Susan Smith-Pinelo is an African-American artist noted for her work in video and performance. She lives and works in Washington, DC.
Senam Okudzeto is an American and British artist and educator who lives and works in Basel, London, Ghana and New York City.
Rujeko Hockley is a New York–based US curator. Hockley is currently the Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Garrett Bradley is an American filmmaker and director of short films, feature films, documentaries, and television. She is known for blending cinematic genres to explore the larger sociopolitical significance of the everyday moments of her subjects' lived experience.
The Frequency Exhibition was a contemporary exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem from November 9, 2005 - March 12, 2006. Curated by Thelma Golden and associate curator Christine Y. Kim, the exhibition featured the works of 35 emerging Black artists. Frequency, following the 2001 exhibition "Freestyle," is one of five "F" themed exhibitions alongside Flow, Fore, and Fictions. While curators Golden and Kim point out that Frequency was not "Freestyle II," the organization of artists under the umbrella of Black identity engages with "Post-Black" art similarly to the Freestyle exhibition.
Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary African-American Art was an exhibition held at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 25 April, 2002 until 23 June, 2002. The show was curated by Thelma Golden, the museum's Chief Curator. Black Romantic was a survey of Contemporary African-American genre painting whose stated purpose, as described by the Director of The Studio Museum, Lowery Stokes Sims was to show "elements of desire, dreams, determination, and romance particular to the black experience present a viewpoint that is oppositional to modernist conceptualization of blackness flavoured by exogenous exoticism, stereotype, caricature, and even abstractionist manipulation".
Legacy Russell is an American curator, writer, and author of Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, published by Verso Books in 2020. In 2021, the performance and experimental art institution The Kitchen announced Russell as the organization's next executive director and chief curator. From 2018 to 2021, she was the associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Kojo Griffin, is an American visual artist. He has had solo exhibitions in the US, including Two with the New York gallery Mitchell-Innes & Nash.
Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art was a landmark exhibition held at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art from November 10, 1994 until March 5, 1995. Organized by curator Thelma Golden, Black Male was a survey of the changing representations of black masculinity in contemporary art from the 1970s to the 1990s. The show included almost seventy works by twenty-nine artists of varying race, gender, and ethnicity. It also featured an extensive film and video program that explored representations of blackness in Hollywood, the independent cinema, video, and television. Black Male was widely labelled controversial and heavily criticized for its political subject matter.
Nadelman, Cynthia. "'Freestyle': Studio Museum in Harlem." Artnews 100, no. 8 (September 2001): 173.
Touré. Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. Atria Books. 2012.
Thompson, Donna. "Freestyle". Art Women. (2001): Web.
Valdez, Sarah. "Freestyling." Art In America 89, no. 9 (September 2001): 134–162.
Valentine, Victoria L. "A 'Freestyle' Take on Post-Black Art." CultureType (October 2013): Web.