The nuances of the word “working” in the title of the Cooley
Gallery’s new exhibition, Working History: African American
Objects, reveal themselves gradually. These are “working” histories
in that they’re still in process and subject to change; a piece of art
is commonly referred to as a “work”; the artists in the show are
working through complex institutions of beliefs; and most pointedly,
labor (work) was the impetus for America’s slave trade and remains a
harsh symbol of modern social and economic imbalances.
Working History is a compact show, rich in these sorts of
subtleties. The artists here are unified by their use of historical
tropes and imagery in their own work. Kara Walker’s famous silhouette
narratives revive 19th-century modes and inject appropriately grotesque
poeticism; Sam Durant’s replica of Huey P. Newton’s famous “peacock
chair” is photographed with a shadowless, sterile precision; Glenn
Ligon’s “Harriet Tubman (version 2) #1” was made by giving old “Black
Power” coloring books to children, and then enlarging andreproducing
the kids’ “coloring of history.”
It’s an intelligent and tidy premise for a show, but Working
History aims even higher with pieces that operate on a more
metaphorical level. With a rococo garishness that recalls the pomp of
the Mardi Gras Indians, Nick Cave constructs enormously intricate body
suits that both symbolize and critique the fetishization of the black
male body. Far quieter is Dave McKenzie’s “Open Letters,” which
presents two versions of a letter McKenzie wrote to an unknown motorist
who almost plowed him down one day. The first letter finds McKenzie
respectful and generous, though nominally reprimanding; the other
version, however, is pathetically deferential in comparison, and goes
beyond civic selflessness into the arena of self-demoralizing. African
American men of the mid-century were often forced to maintain a
cheerful tone of subservient acquiescence during confrontations; when
McKenzie apologizes to the motorist for almost ruining his day by
getting hit in the crosswalk, his subtle exaggeration of the older
mentality is sympathetic in its indictment.
Appropriately, actual historic documents, including a yearbook
showing Reed’s first African American graduate, and a radical “Think
Black” coloring book from 1969 complement the art in Working
History. The inclusion of documents like these not only provides
interesting sidebars to the art, but it puts art and artifacts on
closer footing. The beauty and materiality of the non-art objects are
able to shine; likewise, we are reminded that art is almost always an
aesthetic document of contemporary thought, and not just a bourgeois
object for leisurely contemplation.