According to curator Anthony Elms, Rodney McMillian: The Black Show is an exhibition about transformation. You might prefer to call it an exhibition about flux. It is about fictions, literally literary, with numerous instances of homage to Octavia Butler, and metaphorically historical, as McMillian himself expounded in a preceding interview. It is about mutable spaces, fluid identities, the distance between material and perception, the so-called experience of this ‘reality,’ and the staking out of that reality itself as a constantly undulating landscape.
Read MoreThe word association round offered the most lively interaction between the audience and panelists, with audience members voting for the best word with loud applause. Some of the words matched the thoughtfulness and effort put into the exhibitions considered, while some fell flat.
Read MoreThe Black Show makes me think about José Saramago’s epic novel “Blindness” (1997), in which blindness invokes darkness, oscillating between sociopolitical misconception and human malice. “I don’t think we did go blind,” reflects one of Saramago’s figures at the end.
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