Ironic Iconic: Artists-in-Residence, group exhibition, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2002)

Excerpt from the curatorial text:

"...The title of the exhibition, Ironic Iconic, recalls a series of conversations Kira Lynn Harris, Adia Millett, Kehinde Wiley, and I have shared over the past year about the use of iconography and the reading of iconography vis-à-vis identity. In the wake of the “post-black” discussion engaged by Thelma Golden around last year’s exhibition, Freestyle, the manipulation of icons and the play with the viewer’s or voyeur’s perceptions of culturally loaded iconography have informed discussions of identity.

This is not a new strategy. Kerry James Marshall’s allegories, Garry Simmons’s erasures, and Kara Walker’s silhouettes are prime examples of art practices by contemporary African American artists in which racialized iconography and iconicity are central. Yet they push further into domains of the accessible and traditionally familiar—such as figures, landscapes, and still-life paintings—where, ironically, clarity and illegibility coalesce. In the process, the voyeur dissolves.

Perhaps in part because of the terrain their predecessors have paved, and in adaptation to the tenor of the contemporary moment, Kira, Adia, and Kehinde engage in progressive artistic discourse while introducing new spaces for individuality, sincerity, and even sentimentality."

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Related:

Ironic Iconic: Artists-in-Residence, 2002
Studio Museum in Harlem

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