Curator Naomi Beckwith and her friend, art collector Catherine Sarr, discuss with Financial Times a collection they are creating celebrating Black artists, as well as the stories the pieces tell and their conversations surrounding them. The women go over the importance of art from women and people of color, the intersection of art and life for Black people, exploring modern issues and inequalities through art, the importance of promoting the voices of underrepresented artists, and more.
At the heart of this endeavour is photography. Images by Adama Sylla, Seydou Keïta and Mimi Cherono Ng’ok – from Senegal, Mali and Kenya respectively – have been joined by photographic works by black American artists such as Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson. Sarr singles out a photograph by Boston-born Jamaican artist Lorraine O’Grady. Entitled Art Is…(Cop Eyeing Young Man), it is one of a series of images documenting a performance at the 1983 African-American Day Parade in Harlem, where actors danced with picture frames to capture moments of the event. Talking about the series in 2015, O’Grady said, “A black female social worker told me that she didn’t think avant‑garde art had anything to do with black people. So I decided to prove she was wrong.”
The series as a whole is inherently joyful, but Sarr’s image strikes an uneasy note, bringing to mind issues of racism and police brutality. It also highlights how the Black Lives Matter movement is asking galleries and art institutions to address issues of representation. “The art world is not immune from the same inequities and blind spots the world is protesting against today,” says Beckwith. “I’d love to see the art world examine what and who is missing in the current art-history canon and in the market. Above all, I want the art world to ask, ‘Why not?’ Why not champion more women, more artists of colour, more black-owned galleries, more artists from outside of Europe and the States? It only makes for a more interesting and equitable world.”
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Image from Financial Times
