Bruce-Jones, Eddie and Foster, K. Timeline Installation, We will walk: art and resistance in the American south. [Show/Exhibition]
Abstract
The work in this exhibition is made by African-American artists in the American South during the second half of the 20th Century to the present. Slavery and segregation shaped the rural and industrial economies of the South and created a regime of racial terror. Much of the art in We Will Walk was made within this context. Produced in outdoor yards, the work takes many forms, from ephemeral environments made from salvaged materials to sculptural assemblages, paintings, musical instruments and quilts. In the segregated South creators drew on black Southern cosmology, musical improvisation, American history, African traditions and more recently, popular culture, as material for their work. Blues and Spiritual music were exported from theSouth to the rest of the United States and beyond. The art in We Will Walk can be seen as a visual equivalent to this musical improvisation but has been overlooked until relatively recently. Walking as an act of courage and protest came to the fore during the Civil Rights period (1954–1968) as the title of this exhibition reflects. Activists like writer James Baldwin and photographer Doris Derby went to the South to bear witness and demand change. Vast communal acts like the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery (1965) started a process of transformation that gradually allowed hidden artistic practices to become visible. This exhibition highlights the innovative visual languages created by these artists, their relationship to history, the environment, and their influence on American culture. In a new era of protest and resistance, We Will Walk presents the extraordinary creativity of these artists working outside of the mainstream for the first time in the UK.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Show/Exhibition |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Timeline installation curated by Hannah Collins and Paul Goodwin. Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK. 2019. |
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Contemporary Art, Black, African-American, Civil Rights |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Law School |
| Depositing User: | Eddie Bruce-Jones |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2020 10:11 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 18:01 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/32653 |
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