GWTW Hannah Black, Beverly Buchanan, Hamishi Farah, Ajay Kurian Elliott Jamal Robbins, Jessica Vaughn, Kandis Williams September 14 - October 28, 2018

This exhibition is about reactions to friction and aggression, the responses they evoke, and how the attention paid to voices of dissent swings between contempt and celebration. Words like “black,” “white,” “nigger,” “nazi,” carry different weight based on whose pen they come from, and can all be liberating and torturing at once. There rises, then, the need to find ways to level the field, or at least get a chance to play. The idea that violence is provoked assumes a fair playing field in a world full of naturalized violence. However, the field is very uneven. Sympathetic language does not exempt one from being an aggressor just as seemingly combative language does not exempt one from being an ally.

The role of language makes light of trauma. The trauma then gets hidden or normalized and stored somewhere like in: Buchanan’s houses made of scraps that are not always strong enough to keep the contents safe – one has already been taken away; Vaughn’s long row of paper trays housing reports of equal opportunity employment in America and exit strategies; Kurian’s cabinet doors filled with water and wine glasses that omit a low, constant rumble; Robbins’ body walking endlessly, taking the same steps, never flinching to their surroundings; Farah’s profile that is an image of both growing equality and political transgression; Black’s tower of text that stands next to a shredder, offering new modes of use for something once scrapped; Williams’ invented memories, forever captured in the darkness of a Xeroxed page, both anonymous and familiar; this press release.

Revolutions can come in small gestures and whispers, and are just as powerful as a bullhorn. And when you put out a call to respond, you need to respond too. Having been the recipient of constant aggression, one realizes the need to turn the friction around by inserting new norms, new forms of inclusivity, in less overt ways, and to let friction take its place alongside resilience. This subversion does not equate weakness. It’s a tactic with clear objectives and end states.

And it’s exhausting.

In Hilton Als’ essay GWTW (2000), he writes a response to an editor’s call for him to speak on a collection of American lynching photography:

Now I know from experience that the world has been limited for me by people who see me as a nigger, very much in the way the dead eyes and flashbulb smiles in these photographs say: See what we do to niggers! They are the fear and hatred in ourselves, murdered! Killed! All of this painful and America. Language makes it trite, somehow. I will never write from this niggerish point of view again. This is my farewell. I mean to be courtly and grand. No gold watch necessary, as I bow out of the nigger business.

It ain’t easy being green.

- Ebony L. Haynes

41 Elizabeth St, New York, NY 10013 • [email protected] • (212) 560-0670

Hannah Black (b. 1981, Manchester, UK) attended Goldsmiths College at The University of London and The Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Selected exhibitions include; I NEED HELP (with Precious Okoyomon), Real Fine Arts, New York, NY; ANXIETA, Centre D-Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH; Some Context, Chisenhale, London, UK; Eye to Eye, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, NY; and Give Up The Ghost, Baltic Triennial, Tallinn Kunst Hall, EE. Hannah Black is represented by Arcadia Missa Gallery, London.

Beverly Buchanan (b. 1940, Fuquay, NC) earned several university degrees in the sciences before beginning her professional career in New York as a health-care educator. However, in 1971-- about two years after that-- she enrolled at the Art Students’ League in Manhattan, where she studied with Norman Lewis (1909-1979), the black, American, abstract- expressionist painter. From that time on, Buchanan devoted her time to making art. Selected exhibitions include Beverly Buchanan: Low Country, David Klein Gallery, Detroit, MI; Beverly Buchanan and William Christenberry: The Streaming Light Through All Your Shacks' Cracks, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York and Beverly Buchanan: Ruins and Rituals, 1976- 2013, , Brooklyn, NY. Selected public collection include The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Beverly Buchanan is represented by Andrew Edlin, New York.

Hamishi Farah (b. 1991, Melbourne, AU) is a painter with no formal training. Selected exhibitions include White ppl think im radical, (w/ Aria Dean), Arcadia, Missa, London, UK; America, Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles, CA; Too Busy to Think, Artspace, Auckland, NZ; and Hamishi (retirement), Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, AU. Selected Talks, Events and Projects include Artist-in-residence/mentor/curator/interim director, Artspace, Auckland, NZ; Artist lecture at Goldsmiths University of London, UK and Redlands Art Prize (with Daniel Boyd and Mikala Dwyer), Sydney, AU. Hamishi Farah is represented by Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles and Arcadia Missa Gallery, London.

Ajay Kurian (b. 1984, Baltimore, MD) received a BA from and is currently living and working in New York. Selected exhibitions include Pine Barrens, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Emerlad City, K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; American Artist, Sies + Höke, Düsselford, GER; 2017 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; The Dreamers, 47 Canal, New York; and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York. Kurian is included in the Aïshti Foundation Collection, Antelias, Lebanon, and has published “The Ballet of White Victimhood: On Jordan Wolfson, Petroushka, and Donald Trump”, Artspace, November 15, 2016. Ajay Kurian is represented by 47 Canal, New York.

Elliott Jamal Robbins studied at The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK and The University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ. Selected exhibitions include Snow White Clapping, Kai Matsumiyah, New York, NY; Arizona Biennial, Tuscon Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; If You Stay Busy You Have No Time To Be Unhappy, MOCA Tucson, AZ; and The Fact of Being, Lionel Rombach Gallery, Tucson, AZ. Selected Awards/Honors include The Contemporary Forum Artist Grant, Phoenix Museum of Art, AZ; Medici Scholar Award, University of Tucson, AZ; and The John T. and Anna Lee Stacey Award, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK. Elliott Jamal Robbons is represented by Kai Matsumiya, New York.

Jessica Vaughn (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) is a multi-media artist who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B.H.A. from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Selected exhibitions include: Receipt of Form, Martos Gallery, NY; Invisible Man, Martos Gallery, NY; Material Deviance, Sculpture Center, NY; Itinerant Belongings, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, PA; Round 39: Looking Back, Moving Forward, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Fore, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. She was an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY; and the Whitney Independent Study Program, NY. She was an Idea Fund Grantee, Diverse Works, Houston TX, and she is currently a 2017 New York Artadia Awardee finalist. She is represented by Martos Gallery, New York.

Kandis Williams (b. 1985, Baltimore, MD) received her B.F.A. from Cooper Union, NY and lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. Selected exhibitions include Eurydice, 219 Madison St., New York, NY; Group Therapy, curated by Amanda Donnan, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Ebo ClubTM, Shoot the Lobster LA, Los Angeles, CA; Kandis Williams, Works On paper, Vienna, AUS; True Lies, curated with Simon Cole, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Disfiguring Traditions, SADE, Los Angeles, CA. Select lectures and performances include A Woman’s Work: An Evening of Lectures and Performances organized by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, MoMA, New York, NY; Artist Talk, MFA Lecture Series, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA; and Whereof One Cannot Speak, Therefore One Must Remain Silent, performed by Josh Johnson, curated by Suzy Halaijan, LACE, Los Angeles, CA. Kandis Williams is represented by Night Gallery, Los Angeles.

41 Elizabeth St, New York, NY 10013 • [email protected] • (212) 560-0670