Chicago – During the great migration, more than six million blacks moved to the north and west of the United States, pushed to escape racial violence and oppression in the south of Jim Crow. It goes without saying that works of art exploring such a monumental exodus could themselves take immense forms.
Two opportunities to explore this convergence are currently in sight in the art institutions of Chicago. Regina AGU: shore | lines At the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MOCP) presents AGU's research on a particular start and end point of black American migration: the Gulf South and Chicagoland. Simultaneously, the cultural center presents A movement in all directions: the inheritances of the great migrationA travel group exhibition that made the end of year lists of several criticisms when she made her debut in 2022. The best works of art of the two shows are enormous.
Shore | lines is dominated by photographic panoramas of the size of an AGU piece, printed on fabric and hung like curtains. “Edge, Bank, Shore” is an aqueous horizon 94 feet long reconstructed from the views of the Little Calumet RiverA central navigable track at 180 years of African-American history and Lake Michigan, seen from the historically black district of Bronzeville. The “maritime change” extends over 80 feet and survey of artificial sand dunes built to protect local beaches from algae and coastal erosion in Galveston, Texas, formerly the largest city in the state and the birthplace of Juneteenth. Large enough to feel immersive, pleasant enough to be welcoming, the AGU panoramas are nevertheless not idyllic. A narrow appearance reveals electric pylons, a gray horizon line, garbage cans, fences and parked cars; The scenes composed of images in multiple layers imperfectly correspond; Folds of fabric deny the possibility of seeing everything. These folds help panoramas to adapt to all kinds of spaces, both physically and conceptually: all stories are not welcome everywhere.
Part of what is not visible in the panoramas is represented in Field notesA series of 30 smaller prints that line the mezzanine gallery: the Hurricane Katrina memorial in the St. Bernard parish; The oldest marina belonging to the black of Chicago; The underground rail site of your farm; mud dredging in the Mississippi river delta; Chicago beach where, in 1961, civil rights demonstrators organized a “Wade-in”. By looking for these subjects, the AGU conducted in -depth research using local environmental defenders, community historians and colored environmentalists, but without the informative wall texts of the MOCP, it would be difficult to recognize their importance for the history and geography of blacks. Photographs can only tell part of a story. Perhaps in recognition, Shore | lines Includes generous additional documents on the third floor of the museum. From the permanent collection is a selection of community infrastructure and images taken in and around Chicago navigable waterways, while extracts from Black Midwest Families vacation sequences taking advantage of water in the 1920s and 1940s are loaned by the South Side Home cinematographic project.
Agu, who was born in Houston but has grown in the world, has lived and works in Chicago since 2020. Thus, the landscapes Shore | lines are personal too. These high issues reproduce A movement in all directions: the inheritances of the great migration. The 12 artists responsible for doing new work for this exhibition, as well as the co-organisms of the show, come from families directly affected by this story. They go from the superstars Carrie Mae Weems and Mark Bradford to the emerging artist Akea Brionne, who tenderly embroidered Jacquard Weavings based on old family photos.
Brionne's textiles are large compared to their source material, but they are small compared to the rest of the works in Legacy. This is a monumental spectacle in a monumental space, the cultural center of 30 feet high, acided, the galleries of the fourth floor of Renaissance style and neoclassical style being among the largest in Chicago. Legacy More that is held here – indeed, it is difficult to imagine a better space for the mysterious quartet of black glass gates from Torkwase Dyson, joined by angular black steel tubes, resembling an elegant temperature machine whose dial has been placed for a future of black release. It is difficult not to enter inside.
Among the other out of competition, “A Song for Travelers” by Robert Pruitt (2022), an imaginary family portrait 20 feet long which extends over centuries. Timed with rich and dark charcoal, as well as pastel zingy flashes, the painting brought together people with many eras of black life around a member whose extraterrestrial costume suggests that they are on the way to unimaginably distant lands. In the even greater drawing of Zoë Charlton, a unification also occurs, not people but places they have been. “Permanent Change of Station,” A Sort of Stage Set built from Giant Drawings and Cardboard Cut-Outs, Her Grandmother's Bright Blue North Florida Bungalow Amid A Forest of Flowering Trees, Against A Backdrop of Terraced Southeast Asian Rice Fields, overlooking the White-Only Suburb of Levittown,, DensityLvania, all invading Spanish foam. At the crest of the mountain stands a high -ranking soldier, one of the many people in the extended family of the artist, his distant publications an explanation of the complexity of geography in sight.
Sometimes exhibitions and works speak in a city. Shore | lines And Legacy TO DO. When it happens, it's good to listen. Especially now, when the Trump administration is hell on the destruction of Dei programs and, with them, many progress in understanding and recording African-American history. Blink and another web page disappears, another subsidy is canceled. The black geographies explored in these two exhibitions have always been there, but there are not enough. The stories must be discovered, recorded, studied, crossed, sung, parades and learned. These two exhibitions do this exactly for the great migration, via the competence and the most general public in the manufacture of art. See them, know them and continue to come.
Regina AGU: shore | lines Continue to the Museum of Contemporary Photography (600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) until May 17. The exhibition was organized by the associate curator of MOCP, Asha Iman Veal.
A movement in all directions: the inheritances of the great migration Continue to Chicago Cultural Center (78 East Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois) until April 27. The exhibition was organized by Ryan N. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown and was co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of Art.
