A person who appears to be ambling aimlessly, but is secretly in search of adventure.

6.27.2008

Henry Thaggert interviews Nekisha Durrett

Nekisha is fourth from left, Henry is third from right, Jeffry is dead center.
(c) Tony Powell


In May 2008, Henry Thaggert, a great DC art collector and a co-curator (with Jeffry Cudlin) of the exhibition She's So Articulate at the Arlington Arts Center, spoke to Nekisha Durrett about the meaning behind her work; about how an African American artist came to make Japanese inspired drawings, and about whether she is a Diva. Read this fascinating interview here.

“She’s So Articulate: Black Women Artists Reclaim the Narrative” is a new exhibition at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia, that examines storytelling techniques in art made by black female artists. The show explores the art world’s longstanding, sometimes dismissive, assumptions about African American narrative art, black female artists’ connections to shared culture and history, and the ways in which those connections get articulated in recent contemporary fine art. The exhibition, which runs through July 2008, draws context from the art world’s fascination with Kara Walker, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant winner who recently had a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Walker, an African-American artist, creates larger-than-life cutout caricatures of antebellum slaves and their white masters. Her narratives reference testimonial slave accounts, historical novels and minstrel shows.

“She’s So Articulate” attempts to expand the discussion beyond Walker’s concerns about the traumatic impact of slavery on its victims and survivors. For example one of the artists, Nekisha Durettt, tells a cryptic fairy tale using a multi-paneled installation that seems to be a hybrid of Japanese manga-styling and Kara Walker’s room-sized antebellum scenes.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks for posting the interview. i went to the reception and loved the show.

1:48 PM

 

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