Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has organized two performance art events in conjunction with Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art. Artist Clifford Owens performed an interpretation of scores written for him by Charles Gaines, Shinique Smith, Joyce J. Scott, and Senga Nengudi as part of Clifford Owens: Five Anthology Scores on Thursday, December 12, 2019. Visitors to the museum that week also had the opportunity to perform an Anthology score by Derrick Adams. The next event will be held on Saturday, January 11, 2020, with artist Shinique Smith performing Breathing Room: Bound and Loose at 11am and 7pm. 

“Clifford Owens and Shinique Smith are two of the most innovative and medium-defying artists to hail from Baltimore and their performances are a perfect complement to the groundbreaking works featured in the Generations exhibition,” said Christopher Bedford, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “These performances also embody the ethos of Pamela Joyner and Alfred Giuffrida’s collection as they remind us of the ephemeral nature of performance art and the importance of being witness to artmaking.”

Clifford Owens (born 1971, Baltimore, MD) created Anthology in 2011 as a living archive of black performance art and invited an array of artists—some his elders, others his peers or younger—to compose scores, or instructions for a performance, that he would then perform. Anthology was first presented in a solo exhibition at New York’s MoMA PS1 with scores by 26 major artists that were published as a book the following year. Since then, Owens has continued to invite new scores and reinterpret existing ones in multiple performances. He considers Anthology to be a living and breathing archive that expands and evolves. For the December 12 event, Owens selected scores expressly for his hometown and invited Baltimore performers to participate, including musician Wendel Patrick, artist/performer Joyce J. Scott, and teens A’niya Taylor and Christopher Christian Jr., both of whom were selected by an open call audition. The series of performances led the audience in a procession through the museum at night, concluding with an exit through the historic entrance designed by John Russell Pope. 

Shinique Smith (born 1971, Baltimore, MD) created Breathing Room: Bound and Loose as part of a continuing series of meditative gestures. For her two-part performance, Smith surrounds and covers herself in a deep blue environment using denim and cotton from around the world that she has dyed with indigo or bleached, embedding words and symbols into their fibers. In these performances, Smith explores the common, yet life-dependent act of breathing to create sound with rhythmic inhales and exhales, through which the artist seeks to expand her inner voice and commune with her ancestors.  Once the artist is bound beyond movement, Smith describes that she enters “a deep meditative state with the desire to release and transform a shared cultural experience of toil and bondage into a creative power for all who witness and participate as I am unraveled, and my bindings are loosened.” Smith will also be participating in a public conversation about Baltimore’s influence on her work with Bmore Art founding editor Cara Ober at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore on Tuesday, January 7, at 7pm.

Clifford Owens: Five Anthology Scores and Breathing Room: Bound and Loose are generously sponsored by Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida.

Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art is presented by The Helis Foundation and organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Contributing sponsorship is provided by The Lambent Foundation and The Holt Family Foundation. The presentation in Baltimore is generously sponsored by The Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Ford Foundation, Suzanne F. Cohen Exhibition Fund, The Dorman/Mazaroff Contemporary Endowment Fund, Bank of America, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, and Sotheby’s. Fall programming is generously sponsored by Camden Partners.