Installation view of Phoebe Boswell's "Transit Terminal," paint and graphite on wood.
Curated by Indie A. Choudhury, Unit Gallery’s inaugural presentation at the Venice Biennale, the group exhibition, In Praise of Black Errantry, explores freedom and resistance within the Black diaspora.
Romare Bearden, "Obeah Woman," watercolor on paper
In Praise of Black Errantry is inspired by the Martinique-born French writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011), who proposed errantry as a form of freedom and resistance.
"The Afro-diasporic artists presented in this exhibition take up errantry as a radical strategy that defies boundaries and advocates spontaneity and experimentation beyond cultural fixity or political containment,” Choudhury explains. The exhibition moves elegantly between themes exploring how artists have continually resisted convention and, as Choudhury notes, “pushed against the constraints of formal rules of style, color, medium, or genre towards technical innovation, artistic evolution, and liberation.”
Installation view, Winston Branch, "The Coming," acrylic on canvas.
Featuring nineteen modern and contemporary Afro-diasporic artists, notable works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Phoebe Boswell, and Adelaide Damoah are on view alongside newly commissioned works by Stacey Gillian Abe, Winston Branch, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Rachel Jones, Anya Paintsil, and others. The exhibition also includes a site-specific sound installation by Trevor Mathison (Dubmorphology and Black Audio Film Collective).
Works by artist, Anya Paintsil, explore her practice of creating figurative textiles using ... [+]
“My practice is quite rooted in waywardness and errantry, while also being entirely born out of tradition—both African and European,” says featured artist, Anya Paintsil, whose commissioned work “depicts Black people in non-realistic ways.” Paintsil states that, though she is formally trained, the art she was exposed to at an early age—“West African carvings, statues, masks” formed her visual language. “My practice is rooted completely outside European high art, it is rooted outside the art of upper-class people.”
Keith Piper, "The Seven Rages of Man," mixed media installation
As part of the Biennale’s 2024 theme, “Foreigners Everywhere,” which explores complexities around ethnicities, genders, and nationalities, In Praise of Black Errantry presents questions such as, how have artists used errantry as a form of Black dissent? How have diasporic experiences influenced artistic innovations and freedoms? And how do constructs like disobedience and waywardness reveal themselves in the art of the Black diaspora?
Adelaide Damoah, "Kpaanyɔ (Eight)," 2023, cyanotype, ink, skin paint, gun metal pigment and gold on ... [+]
For commissioned artist Adelaide Damoah, “the artwork embodies the spirit of errant resistance by challenging dominant narratives, reclaiming agency, and embracing the fluidity of cultural identity in the face of historical colonial oppression...It invites viewers to engage critically with the complexities of history and to envision alternative narratives of empowerment and liberation.”
In Praise of Black Errantry is on view now through June 29, 2024 in the Palazzo Pisani S. Marina.
For more information, visit Unit London.
