GROUP EXHIBITION

Chronologically speaking, Bitter Nest begins with the works of Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) and Judy Chicago (b. 1939), respective pioneers of racial and feminist activist art. Brought together for the very first time, these two trailblazers, engage in tacit dialogues with exhibition’s other artists, each concerned with their own individual ideas and critical observations. These other artists—Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982), Genesis Belanger (b.1978), Mark Thomas Gibson (b. 1980), Emily Mae Smith (b.1979), Chiffon Thomas (b. 1991) and Robin F. Williams (b. 1984)— from younger generations, offer a new and evolving view on the issues of their time, on the personal as political, and demonstrating an enduring and fertile American artistic vocabulary.

In a 1964 text, the poet and revolutionary Amiri Baraka—Faith Ringgold’s contemporary—wrote about the use of personhood and narrative within contemporary art, ‘Poems have got, literally, to be about something. And the weights of love, murder, history, economics have got to drag whoever’s writing in a personally sanctified direction or else there will be no poems at all. But it is not the direction that’s interesting, or makes literature or art, but the replaying of it, by the poet.’ All of the artists in Bitter Nest are storytellers, harnessing the power of their own subjectivity to change the stakes, and encourage the proliferation, diversification, and retelling of perspective.