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| Photo By Melvin Grier |
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Spirit of '77: Photographer Melvin Grier's work is part of the Art Museum's Legacy exhibition.
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The exhibition currently on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM),
Making a Legacy, Living the Legacy, is poorly titled (purposely?) and far too brief. The curator, Thom Shaw, does an excellent job in choosing important local African-American artists' work, and the result is a far-ranging selection of materials and points of view. But the exhibition stops short, though. The works are loud, orating and intelligent, yet the convergence of so many voices in such a small room causes a cacophony.
Carolyn Mazaloomi's unconventional quilts are a highlight. Mazaloomi understands the history of the quilt, especially in the African-American female community.
Quilt-making was often a communal project. Black women worked together to weave stories into their patterns, often including harrowing tales of bigotry, slavery or history -- most in a kind of cryptogram. The point was twofold: to make something warm and protective for the home and to keep African-American history alive while also keeping it covert, so that no one would have the ability (or cleverness) to stop the stories from being told.
Mazaloomi's quilts take that history and fix it to contemporary culture. Instead of keeping her voice and narrative under wraps, she hides nothing. In particular, the 2005 work "Strange Fruit" mixes our treasured Americana (flags and things) with the brutal reality of racism (lynchings, storm clouds eliciting the fever of war and rebellion and clearly sewn silhouettes of the Ku Klux Klan).
Another standout in this group of five artists is Ellen Jean Price, whose prints are based on old photographs from her family album -- also tying into the concept of making history current. Price was born in Queens, N.Y., to biracial (black and white) parents and constantly faced the question, "What are you?"
Her photographic reproductions make sense in this context. She crops the old photos around the biological points of knowledge -- ears, mouth, eyes. The ubiquitous question "What are you?" is answered only by Price's own understanding of herself. What she was taught. What she heard about herself. What she saw. What she knew.
She can only answer the question by returning to her heritage and the things she grew up knowing.
Thomas R. Phillips' sculpture, "Watermelon Mama and the Melon Chilluns Fetish," takes up the center of the gallery and in truth should be in a room of its own. The work is so ornate and powerful that a visitor must be careful not to see only it.
Phillips' sculpture is both anthropomorphic and landscape-like. Two figures, standing back to back, seeming unaware of each other, tell very similar stories. You'll find a cross (religion of survival or religion of control, your decision), Americana, watermelons (the overwrought cliché), exposed female breasts (linked obviously to the "primitive" African tribal culture), the old chains of bondage, candles and fetishes (adding a little New Orleans flavor) and mirrors (perhaps to implicate us all).
What's missing from this exhibition is not powerful work (though sorely missed are artists Terence Hammonds, Brian Joiner and Cynthia Lockhart, among others) -- it's space and organization. This isn't Shaw's problem; it's the museum's.
Most of these works, you'll notice, have been donated by the artists themselves, when in reality they shouldn't be set aside in a little room but be part of the CAM's permanent collection. Grade: B-
MAKING A LEGACY, LIVING THE LEGACY continues at the Cincinnati Art Museum through July 30.
