Mishkin Gallery Reopens to the Public with Lamin Fofana: BLUES Exhibition
BLUES will be on view through May 6April 4, 2022
Filmmaker Nicolas Premier’s “Black Metamorphosis” which interprets the memoirs of Sylvia Wynter and the story of her becoming the scholar/playwright/philosopher that she is today.
Mishkin Gallery is pleased to re-open the gallery to the public with BLUES, an exhibition by Sierra Leone-born, New York-based musician and artist Lamin Fofana. The exhibition opened briefly in March 2020 but closed soon after due to Covid-19. BLUES will be on view through May 6.
Fofana’s music is a conduit for engaging with an array of issues involving blackness, migration, displacement, and race through collective listening. The exhibition centers on a trilogy of sound works comprising the albums Black Metamorphosis, Darkwater, and Blues that engage with seminal texts by Sylvia Wynter, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Amiri Baraka to reflect on historical and epistemological trajectories of contemporary social and political thought through the lens of Black Studies. These works will be presented alongside videos and photographs by Fofana and his collaborators Jim C. Nedd and Nicolas Premier.
Fofana creates spaces for contemporary black life in the West that are informed by his interest in history and the sonic and “allow for dreaming and imagining other ways of being” which foreground non-linear thinking and experience. Mishkin Gallery will be the main site of the exhibition, with additional elements such as posters and sounds spiraling outwards through the College campus and into the city. Aiming for both physical and emotional resonance, the works attempt to challenge authoritative forms of representation and communication while drawing upon the artists’ personal experiences of diaspora, the coming and going of communities. Throughout the exhibition, the Gallery will hold live music performances, talks, readings, and listening sessions to collectively think through what Christina Sharpe calls “wake work”, living with and attending to the paradoxical history of slavery and its afterlives.
“We are excited to physically welcome Baruch and New York back to the Mishkin Gallery for the exhibition Lamin Fofana: BLUES,” said Alaina Claire Feldman, Mishkin’s director and curator. “The exhibition deeply resonates with the concerns of our students: those of racial and social justice, diaspora and displacement, and most importantly, how art and music is a conduit for coming together. The exhibition was forced to close after just one day in 2020 due to COVID-19, but we are thrilled to recommit to the artists involved and to this particular kind of artwork.”
A booklet with contributions by Feldman, Fofana, Dino Dinçer Şirin, and excerpts of primary source texts will accompany the exhibition. A special zine designed by Alexandra Tell including recent writing by the artists will account for and reflect on the past two year since the exhibition had initially opened.
BLUES is curated by Alaina Claire Feldman. The exhibition was made possible by the Baruch College Fund and the George and Mildred Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. Additional support was provided by Hedwig Feit and the Schindler-Lizana Fund for Latin American Arts and Culture, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
Location: Mishkin Gallery, 135 East 22ndStreet in New York City
Gallery hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Website: baruch.cuny.edu/mishkin
Gallery contact info: 1-646-660-6653, mishkingallery@baruch.cuny.edu
The gallery is free and open to the public.
Media Contacts:
Alaina Claire Feldman, Gallery Director, 1-646-660-6653, Alaina.Feldman@baruch.cuny.edu
Evan Nemeroff, Public Relations Specialist, 1-646-660-6146, Evan.Nemeroff@baruch.cuny.edu
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