Since I live right outside DC, I recently got an email about “12 Virtual and IRL Things to Do This Week In D.C.” In this article, I found this online show that the Hirshhorn museum has put together that is specifically for viewing online. The exhibition explores how artists are using technology and format to imagine history. Given current events and the discussions we have had in class, I found Kiyan Williams’s Meditation on the Making of America particularly fascinating. The link doesn’t show the video, but you can find it on this page. The description of his piece is attached below.
In this work, Williams creates a live-action portrait of America that viscerally conveys the nation’s history of violence against Black bodies and land. Williams draws a map of the United States by flinging and smearing soil onto a wall-mounted canvas, occasionally pausing to gather handfuls of the material from a coffin-like sculpture containing an earthen face. After a few minutes, a second performer joins, and throws soil at Williams as they stand and kneel against the wall. As the soil in the box is slowly exhausted, the artist paints a picture of extraction—of labor from enslaved people on the one hand, and of the earth’s natural resources on the other. The soil in the performance was gathered from plantation ruins in St. Croix, where Williams’s ancestors were enslaved, and from the grounds of the house that one of their ancestors owned after she was emancipated.
2 Comments
Sarah Kim · December 7, 2020 at 6:52 pm
I, too, really appreciate the Hirshorn museum and I think it is one of the better Smithsonian museums. Anyways, the art piece is amazing especially to see how visceral it is.
Kidist Wosenyeleh · December 7, 2020 at 7:41 pm
Wow, I really like the picture of the piece that you included here. Something about it just speaks to me. I’ll have to look more into Kiyan Williams and his work.
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