Malik Gaines

Nina Simone's quadruple consciousness -- Efua Sutherland, Ama Ata Aidoo, the state, and the stage -- The radical ambivalence of Günther Kaufmann -- The Cockettes, Sylvester, and performance as life -- Afterword : a history of impossible progress

A History of the Impossible

Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell

Melinda McCurdy

"This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Kehinde Wiley: a portrait of a young gentleman, organized by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Malik Gaines investigates the artist's post-modern strategy of inserting Black subjects into canonical European settings. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell situates Wiley's work within the traditions and trappings of grand manner eighteenth-century portraiture"--

A Portrait of a Young Gentleman

Kehinde Wiley

C. Carr

Valerie Cassel Oliver

Thomas J. Lax

EJ Hill

The first-in depth publication to critically investigate the impact of Pope.L's early performances on his career Pope.L (b. 1955) is a consummate thinker and provocateur whose practice across multiple mediums - including painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, theatre and video - utilizes abjection, humour, endurance, language and absurdity to confront and undermine rigid systems of belief. Spanning works made primarily from 1978 to 2001, member: Pope.L, 1978-2001 features a combination of videos, photographs, sculptural elements, ephemera and live actions. This volume, published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, presents a detailed study of thirteen early works that helped define Pope.L's career. It features essays by curators, artists, filmmakers and art historians, plus an intervieww and artistic interventions by the artist. These components are supplemented by thirteen detailed plate entries that highlight key details of each work. The entries engage performances that are rooted in experimental theatre such as Egg Eating Contest (1990) and Aunt Jenny Chronicles (1991) as well as street interventions such as Thunderbird Immolation a.k.a. Meditation Square Piece (1978), ATM Piece (1996), and The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001-2009), among others. Together these works highlight the role of that performance has played within a seditious, emphatically interdisciplinary career that has established Pope.L as an influential force in the history of contemporary art.

Pope. L, 1978-2001

Member

Adrienne Edwards

Jade Gordon

Alexandro Segade

An unprecedented look at the contemporary collective's theatrical art, charting their performances and exploring their social and creative commitments The first monographic publication on the art collective My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade) offers new insights into the work of this singular group of performers. My Barbarian has used performance to theatricalize social issues, adapting narratives from modern plays, historical texts, and mass media; this volume accompanies a major retrospective celebrating the group's twentieth anniversary. An overview essay relates their work's formal qualities to several historical moments over this span: the club era following September 11, 2001; postcolonial theater after the 2008 financial collapse; and political theater responding to the pressing issues of today. Other contributions read the collective's output through a lens of queer and other critical theory, and contextualize it within the twenty-first-century experimental performance scene. A richly illustrated visual chronology features texts on each of My Barbarian's past works written by the artists. Performances and video works are re-created using stills alongside photos, drawings, scripts, and personal materials drawn from the artists' archives, many never previously published.

My Barbarian

Malik Gaines

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