Senga Nengudi

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Senga Nengudi , born Sue Irons on September 18, 1943 in Chicago , is an African-American artist best known for her abstract sculptures that combine found objects and dance performance . She has been a representative of the Afro - American avant-garde in New York City and Los Angeles since the early 1960s .

Early life and education

Nengudi grew up with her mother in Los Angeles and Pasadena . She studied art and dance at California State University in Los Angeles since the early 1960s , and graduated in 1967 with a BA. After a year of study at Waseda University in Tokyo , she returned to California State University for a master’s degree with a focus on sculpture, which she successfully completed in 1971. During her studies she worked at the Watts Towers Art Center founded by Noah Purifoy . She was also an art instructor at the Pasadena Art Museum and the Fine Arts Community Workshop . She now lives and works in Colorado Springs .

Cooperations

Nengudi was part of the radical Afro-American avant-garde art scenes in New York and Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s. She was a member of the Studio Z collective, also known as the LA Rebellion . This is where African-American artists met who were distinguished by their experimental and improvising work. Nengudi often worked with David Hammons and Maren Hassinger, who were also members of Studio Z.

Nengudi was represented by two galleries, Pearl C. Woods Gallery in Los Angeles, directed by Greg Pitts, and Just Above Midtown in New York. JAM director Linda Goode Bryant was a major influence on Nengudi's development. In an interview, Nengudi emphasized how important the creative collaboration with galleries like these is for the African American art scene.

The artist later also curated exhibitions herself, such as that of Kira Lynn Harris at the Cue Art Foundation in New York in spring 2009.

"Répondez s'il vous plait" ("RSVP")

Her son was born in 1975, and in her artistic work she subsequently addressed the changes that pregnancy and childbirth had led to in her body. Nengudi developed her "répondez s'il vous plait" series, which made her famous. By merging her interests in movement and sculpture, Nengudi created abstract sculptures with choreographies of everyday objects performed in front of a live audience or recorded by a camera. The starting material for the sculptures was, for example, nylon tights , which were stretched, twisted, knotted and filled with sand. The finished sculptures often hung on the walls of the gallery, but also protruded into the room, reminiscent of human bodies, female breasts and the womb. For them, the use of tights as a material reflected the elasticity of the human, especially the female, body. In their installations, art critics discovered a mixture of sensuality, racial identity, physical awareness and a conscious preoccupation with the image that society makes of the female body.

Nengudi's “RSVP” sculptures have also been performed by traveling performance groups, including “Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 ”and“ Blues for Smoke ”in the early 2010s.

Performances

In 1978 Nengudi and Maren Hassinger developed a performance in which the two artists improvised movements, woven into a net of nylon tights. The performance illustrated the diverse limitations that women are confronted with due to socially defined gender roles . During this period Nengudi produced many staged photographs in which she herself often appears as an anonymous, genderless figure who defies definition.

In the same year, Nengudi and other members of the Studio Z collective (including Hammons and Hassinger again) performed the Ceremony for Freeway Fets under a freeway bridge on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Nengudi created costumes and headgear made of nylon tights for the performers. Hammons and Hassinger represented the male and female spirits, while Nengudi appeared as the spirit that brought the sexes together. Both the dance performance and the underlying soundtrack were improvised.

In March 2017, Nengudi's art was a focal point at the Armory Show art fair in New York City.

At the Biennale in Venice from 13 May to 16 November, 2017 Nengudi was also represented.

"Warp Trance"

During her stay at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in 2007 , Nengudi first used video as an art form of her own. During visits to textile factories, she made video and audio recordings of the factory operations and collected punch cards such as those used to program the jacquard looms . In the finished installation Warp Trance , Nengudi projected the video recordings onto images of the punch cards. At the same time, an ambient soundtrack was heard that Butch Morris had composed from the background noise of the film material. The work dealt with technology, the social significance of work, contemporary music and ritual dances. First and foremost, Nengudi wanted the audience to enjoy movement and dance.

Interculturalism

The problem of cultural, ethnic and racial classifications was just as central to Nengudi's artistic work as her handling of gender-specific restrictions. For her performances she often combined African , Asian and Native American art forms with staged photographs. Her works of art try to create an intercultural inspiration in all areas of life. She often cites African and Asian philosophies as the basis of her work.

Pseudonyms

In addition to her installations, sculptures and performances, Nengudi also created paintings and photographs. She wrote poetry under the pseudonyms Harriet Chin, Propecia Lee, and Lily B. Moor. In an interview, Nengudi explained how she made the decision to develop these:

“It started when I saw a rack of art postcards that looked great and very African. When I turned over a postcard and saw that the artist had a white-sounding name, I thought 'How can that be?'. I later wondered why I reacted this way. I thought about names and how we draw conclusions from name to skin color. If no name is given, people will have to deal with the work as such. But if the work is by someone by the name of 'Yamamoto' or 'Rodriguez', we immediately have a different filter for our view of it. The different names I use all have a personal reference. I'd like to be like 'Br'er Rabbit' d. U: American cartoon character], would like to try tricks, play with things and get people to see things differently. "

- Senga Nengudi

reception

Nengudi's works can be found in the permanent collections of major American museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh , the MOCA in Los Angeles. Some important work is also on display at the Studio Museum and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

In 2020 Nengudi was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1970: Sapphire: You've Come a Long Way Baby, group exhibition, Gallery 32 , Los Angeles
  • 1971: 8 artistes afro-américains, group exhibition, Musée Rath , Geneva
  • 1977: Répondez s'il vous plaît (RSVP) , Performance, Pearl C. Wood Gallery , Los Angeles, and Just Above Midtown Gallery , New York
  • 1977: The Concept as Art , group exhibition, Just Above Midtown Gallery , New York
  • 1977: Studio Z: Individual Collective, group exhibition, Long Beach Museum of Art , Long Beach (California)
  • 1980: Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States , group exhibition, AIR Gallery , New York
  • 1980: Afro-American Abstraction , group show PS1 , New York, Toledo Museum of Art , Toledo, Ohio. Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin Texas. Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery , Los Angeles
  • 1981: Air Propo , group performance with Cheryl Banks and Butch Morris, Just Above Midtown Gallery , New York
  • 1981: Vestige-The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus , solo exhibition, Just Above Midtown Gallery , New York
  • 1988–89: Art as a Verb: The Evolving Continuum: Installations, Performances, and Videos by 13 Afro-American Artists, group exhibition, Maryland Institute College of Art , Baltimore Maryland. Studio Museum , Harlem, New York.
  • 1998: Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–70, group exhibition. Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles, California.
  • 2003: Répondez s'il vous plaît, solo exhibition, Thomas Erben Gallery , New York
  • 2004: From One Source Many Rivers , solo exhibition, Carnegie International 2004–05, Carnegie Museum of Art , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  • 2005: Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, group exhibition. Contemporary Art Museum , Houston, Texas.
  • 2006: Side by Side, group performance with Maren Hassinger. Cartier Foundation for Art Contemporain , Paris
  • 2007: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, group exhibition. Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles, California. PS1 , New York City.
  • 2007: Senga Nengudi: Warp Trance. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Morris Gallery , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  • 2008-10: Répondez s'il vous plaît, group exhibition with Rashawn Griffin, Studio Museum , Harlem, New York.
  • 2011: Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980, group performance at Hammer Museum , Los Angeles, California. PS1, New York
  • 2012: Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art , group exhibition Contemporary Arts Museum , Houston, Texas.
  • 2012: Love U, solo exhibition, Warehouse Gallery , Syracuse, New York.
  • 2013: Performances, 1976–81, solo exhibition, Thomas Erben Gallery , New York
  • 2013: Blues for Smoke, group exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art , New York City.
  • 2014: The Performing Body, solo exhibition, RedLine Gallery , Denver, Colorado.
  • 2014: The Material Body, solo exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art , Denver, Colorado.
  • 2016: Senga Nengudi: Improvisational Gestures, solo exhibition, Henry Art Gallery , Seattle, Washington.
  • 2019/2020: Senga Nengudi , solo exhibition, Lenbachhaus, Munich .
  • 2020: See the sun at midnight. Contemporary art from the Lenbachhaus and the KiCo Foundation , Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus , Munich (September 2020 - August 2021).

swell

  1. ↑ Senga Nengudi: September 10 - October 24, 2015 . Dominique Lévy Gallery, New York City 2015, ISBN 1-944379-02-9 , p. 88.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Natalie Hegert: Repondez s'il vous plait: An Interview with Senga Nengudi . September 28, 2016.
  3. ^ Theresa Dickason Cederholm: Afro-American artists: a bio-bibliographical directory. . Trustees of the Boston Public Library, Boston 1973, pp. 139-140.
  4. ↑ Senga Nengudi - Art + Culture Projects (en-US) . In: Art + Culture Projects . Retrieved March 4, 2018. 
  5. ↑ Anne Doran: Senga Nengudi at Thomas Erben (reviews) . Art in America. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  6. ↑ Kira Lynn Harris ( en-US ) Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  7. ↑ Senga Nengudi | Now Dig This! digital archive | Hammer Museum ( s )
  8. ↑ http://hyperallergic.com/146981/the-improvised-body-the-reemergence-of-senga-nengudi/
  9. ↑ KT Hawbaker: Senga Nengudi stretches the limits of womanhood (en-US) . In: chicagotribune.com . Retrieved March 4, 2018. 
  10. ↑ Senga Nengudi - Art in America (en-US) . In: Art in America . Retrieved March 4, 2018. 
  11. ↑ Nick Stillman: Senga Nengudi's "Ceremony for Freeway Fets" and Other Los Angeles Collaborations . East of Borneo. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  12. ↑ Andy Battaglia: Visions for Pantyhose and Sand: Senga Nengudi's Booth at the Armory Show ( en-US ) March 2, 2017. Accessed July 1, 2017.
  13. ↑ https://universes.art/de/biennale-venedig/2017/fast-tour/img-15-n/
  14. ↑ a b Senga Nengudi | Fabric Workshop and Museum ( en )
  15. ↑ Senga Nengudi profiles from the Thomas Erben Gallery website .
  16. ↑ Lenbachhaus - Senga Nengudi. Retrieved September 25, 2019 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Nengudi, Senga
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American visual and performing artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago