Page 204 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

ARTIST’S CHOICE:
GRACE WALES BONNER - SPIRIT
MOVERS

EXHIBITION BRINGS TOGETHER APPROXIMATELY 50 WORKS
FROM MOMA’S COLLECTION THAT EXPLORE FORMS OF BLACK
STYLE, GESTURE, PERFORMANCE, AND SOUND

For this sixteenth installment of MaMA's Artist's Choice series,

London based designer Grace Wales Bonner brings together
artworks that appear to breathe, to possess an otherworldly
life. Sculptures seem to tremble with sound; scores evoke
ceremonies; drawings trace states of reverie. Drawn from
the Museum's collection, the exhibition creates multisensory
connections between pictures and poems, music and
Moustapha Dimé. Lady with a Long Neck. 1992. Wood, iron and paint, 6' 8 1/2"x
performance, hearing and touch, spirit and matter, gestures 39"x12" (204.5x99x30.5 cm). Gift of Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar . Moustapha Dimé © 2023 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Such intimate and poetic
relations inspired Wales Bonner's title for the exhibition: Spirit
Movers.
These works are not static objects or images but dynamic
entities deeply connected to ritual and devotion. Many reveal
the rhythmic, repetitive, or meditative processes of their
making. The precisely hand-drawn grids in Agnes Martin's
Friendship (1963) join the carefully woven tufts of human
hair in David Hammons's Afro Asian Eclipse (or Black China)
(1978). Terry Adkins's hybrid sculpture-instruments in brass
and drumskin are also traces of the artist's performances.
Many works here use found materials from vastly different
moments and places, conjuring past lives and the passage
of time. They imply another movement, too: the migration
of diasporic communities around the world, from the Afro-
Atlantic to the Asian-Pacific. Wales Bonner often weaves
such histories of transience into her interdisciplinary clothing
designs, publications, exhibitions, and films.
Creating a space for collective experience, for procession,
the exhibition invites us to enter the world of these "spirit
movers." Together, we might sense their stories and dream in
Mathias Goeritz. Message Number 7B, Ecclesiastes VII: 6. 1959. Nails, metal foils, oil, and their many rhythms. "Beyond the single, immaculate individual
iron on wood panel, 17 7/8 x 13 5/8 x 3 3/8"(45.1 x 34.5 x 8.4 cm). Gift of Philip Johnson. expression," Wales Bonner notes, "I hear an enthralling
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. D.R. © Mathias Goeritz 1959 License by L.M.
symphony."
Daniel Goeritz y Galeria La Caja Negra, Madrid

204 WORLD of ART