Bwog pays a visit to the Wallach Art Gallery.

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of visiting the contemporary art exhibit Homage: Queer Lineages on Video at the Wallach Art Gallery. The exhibit was made up of selected works from the Akeroyd collection, an art collection dedicated to video and time based media, and aimed to explore how time- and lens-based media allow for artists to articulate their feelings across generations. The purpose of the exhibit was to pay homage to queer historical figures and to honor queer cultural histories with gratitude. Figures including John Giorno, Goh Choo San, Derek Jarman, and Oh Joon-soo play a role in the creation of these works. According to the description written by the gallery, each piece was “intervening in commemorative genres of image making—including portraiture and documentary—through performative acts, selective appropriation, and imaginative staging, these works produce queer forms of kinship.” 

The exhibit was made up of works by seven contemporary artists, namely Dineo Seshee Bopape, Tony Cokes, Carolyn Lazard, Kang Seung Lee, P. Staff, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. If I am being honest, contemporary art is rarely my cup of tea. I usually prefer classic paintings. Despite this, I actually found this exhibit very engaging. All of them included videos or moving images of some type, and were projected onto a blank wall. Despite these similarities, each piece was very different from the previous one. A Heart of A Hand is a choreographed dance by Joshua Serafin. One is a two channel installation in which the screen flickers and strobes. One is a collection of poems read by the poet John Giorno. Of the pieces making up the collection, I was drawn to two of the simplest ones, a love supreme by Bopape, and For Bruce by Weerasethakul. 

To add to the exhibit and to provide background information for each piece, the Gallery distributed pamphlets including essays from Lynton Talbot, a writer, educator, and curator based in London, along with various other writers. Because of my limited knowledge of contemporary art and video based media, I referenced his essays while walking through the exhibit to better understand each piece.

Bopape’s a love supreme was the first piece I saw in the collection, though it was not until after I came back after seeing the rest of the pieces that I think I came closer to understanding it. Most of the works in the collection include an actor, dancer, or other performer doing performative acts. In this piece, the subject licks chocolate off of a glass surface. 

In the beginning of the video, the screen is almost completely covered in a layer of chocolate. The performer slowly but surely licks the chocolate off of the glass, eventually giving the audience a closer and better view of the performer behind the previously looming wall of chocolate. According to an essay written about the piece by Talbot, the performance is meant to mimic the act of tending to wounds, an act of adoration and care. Through this piece, Bopape was trying to counter the erasure of Black women and their work by uncovering the performer from the wall of chocolate.  

I, admittedly, had to do a little bit of research after seeing it to understand it better. Now that I have, I think that Bopape was successful in what she was trying to do. I find her method of combating erasure through the chocolatey uncovering to be compelling, and maybe even a little humorous.

For Bruce by Weerasethakul is a two channel video installation, with one of the videos being overlayed on the other. Both channels display scenes of natural settings: rolling rivers, mumbling streams, and bridges nestled in trees. These natural scenes, combined with the isolated location of the installation within the exhibit, hidden in the far corner, create a calming effect on the viewer. 

According to Talbot’s essay on the piece, Weerasethakul created For Bruce as a dedication to the late filmmaker Bruce Baillie. Baillie was known for creating beautiful landscaping shots and was most known as an experimental filmmaker from the Bay Area in the 1960s. In Talbot’s words, “‘the film installation reads as a visual symbiosis between nature and the spiritual essence of things; on two screens, we are invited to watch closely, carefully and conscientiously.”

Once again, it took me quite a bit of researching to understand this piece, as I previously had no idea who Bruce Baillie was. Now that I have, I believe Weerasethakul was successful in his honoring of Baillie. Of the incredibly limited repertoire I have seen of Baillie, I can understand how Weerasethakul was trying to mimic his filmmaking tradition. His piece is very touching as it seeks to connect the viewer to the world around us, and even more so after understanding the story behind it.

Overall, I would say that I was impressed by Homage. Like I said before, I am not a contemporary art person. I was impressed with this exhibit because it did something that many other contemporary exhibits did not. By focusing on film and video media, the audience was able to see the pieces evolve in front of them. A story was being told, right before us and in real time. The pieces were not stagnant, they were alive and trying to tell us something. In doing so, they were showing us pieces not just telling us their stories, but also why they mattered.

Image of a love supreme from Wallach Art Gallery website