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In conjunction with his exhibition Who Is Queen?, Adam Pendleton brings together a diverse selection of moving-image works, probing the relationships between subjectivity, Blackness, abstraction, and the avant-garde.
Two “absolute films” by Hans Richter (Rhythmus 21, 1921, and Rhythmus 23, 1923) and a “rayograph” film by Man Ray (Le Retour à la raison, 1923) explore the limits and potentials of the film frame, putting abstract forms and textures into motion. Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ Statues Also Die (1953) examines the transformation and circumscription of African art in the European museum. Gordon Matta-Clark’s short film City Slivers (1976) is a cut-up portrait of New York City, while Joan Jonas’s video work Good Night Good Morning (1976) is a self-portrait whose subject is established through repeated greetings and farewells. RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), the longest work in the program, intimately documents a Black community in western Alabama.
Organized by Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator, with Danielle A. Jackson, former Curatorial Assistant, and Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, with the support of Veronika Molnar, Intern, Department of Media and Performance.