Black people were present in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Here, in society, in Rembrandt’s neighbourhood and in art. This has long—wrongly—been overlooked. Until September 6, 2020, in The Rembrandt House Museum you can come eye to eye with extraordinary portraits of black people. How did artists depict them? And can we find out who they are? HERE: Black in Rembrandt’s Time is about overlooked works of art and representation, about recognition and acknowledgment.

What strikes us in Rembrandt’s art and that of many of his contemporaries? The stereotypes that later fixed the image of black people were yet to prevail. Black people are not simply secondary figures in subordinate roles, but often the subjects of the work. The exhibition also tells the stories behind the works. Between around 1630 and 1660 there was a small community of free black people around Jodenbreestraat, in Rembrandt’s neighbourhood. Recent research has revealed a lot more about these Afro-Amsterdammers.

“For years I’ve been looking for portraits of black people like me. Surely there had to be more than the stereotypical images of servants, enslaved people or caricatures? I found the alternative in Rembrandt’s time: a gallery of portraits of black people who are depicted with respect and dignity.”– Stephanie Archangel, Guest Curator of the exhibition

HERE: A Selection of outstanding masterpieces

Rembrandt’s interest in black people was highly unusual in the seventeenth century. They appear in at least ten of his paintings, six etchings and six drawings. They are usually secondary figures, but in a 1630 etching (‘Bust of a Woman’) a young woman stars. Rembrandt made this etching when he was still living in Leiden. Her facial features indicate that she was black, but he had not yet managed to make her skin appear dark. He had more success with this aspect later, in Amsterdam; his later portraits are often accurately depicted from life. It seems likely that Rembrandt used his neighbours as models.

Another eye-catching work in the exhibition is Hendrick Heerschop’s King Caspar. Legend has it that one of the three magi who came to worship the Christ child was an African. Sometimes he is called Caspar, sometimes Balthasar. Heerschop painted him without a setting or a story. He can only be identified by his expensive clothes and the jar of incense he gave as his gift. But it is the man’s face that attracts the most attention; he looks at us proudly and self-confidently. Rembrandt’s first pupil, Gerrit Dou, also made an impressive portrait of a black boy dressed in a fantasy costume, looking at us over his shoulder. 

What remains complicated is the identity of the seventeenth-century black sitters. We are discovering more and more names of Rembrandt’s black neighbours, but we cannot link them to the portraits. We do, though, know who the man in the portrait on the right is. Dom Miguel de Castro was a controversial figure, the ambassador of Soyo (or Sonho), a region of the Congo that wanted independence. Dom Miguel and his servants came to Holland to argue his case and he sat for his portrait during his stay in Middelburg. He is shown here according to the standards of a seventeenth century portrait of an important man: powerful and serious. 

HERE: Black Artists Now

In contemporary art, black plays an entirely different role from that in the seventeenth century. Now there are black artists who reflect on their own identities. And when black people are depicted, we know who they are. Both sides, the maker and the portrayed, now have a voice. The exhibition features new and existing works by ten prominent contemporary artists, including Iris Kensmil, Iriée Zamblé and Charl Landvreugd.

“As a museum we hope that this exhibition will make an impact. HERE. Black in Rembrandt’s Time is a powerful statement about black presence and representation in the Netherlands, about better looking and blind spots, about having a voice and a changing image.” – Lidewij de Koekkoek, Director, The Rembrandt House Museum

HERE: Black in Rembrandt’s time is on display till September 6, 2020 at The Rembrandt House Museum (Amsterdam). The exhibition was the brainchild of guest curators Elmer Kolfin and Stephanie Archangel, the design was by Raul Balai and Brian Elstak. Multi-disciplinary evening programmes in a number of venues accompany this exhibition. WBOOKS is publishing a book and there will also be a zine about contemporary black artists.

HERE: Black in Rembrandt’s time is on display till September 6, 2020
REMBRANDT HOUSE MUSEUM
Jodenbreestraat 4
1011 NK Amsterdam
www.rembrandthuis.nl

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Visual artists, creators, fashion designers, experimenters, tattooists, musicians…
As part of the original exhibition “City Prince/sses”, a good fifty artists will be exhibiting at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (France) from 21 June to 8 September 2019.

Without any geographical grouping, the artists of this brand new exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo are presented most of the time with new productions and in situ interventions.The exhibition “City Prince/sses” is presented as an imaginary, multiple and complex city, without borders, messy, staggering and creative: an unpredictable laboratory, which is always in motion and being (re)constructed.

DHAKA, LAGOS, MANILA, MEXICO CITY and TEHRAN are expressions of a tissue of contradictions, as seen in their saturated traffic which coexists with digital networks which supposedly work fluidly.

Quite clearly, these megacities are very different from one another. Their cultural, political and social singularities teem with numerous narratives which are all side-tracks providing glimpses into their identities, devoid of anything that could be univocal.

Between skyscrapers and shacks, urgency and patience, megacities are undergoing a chaotic expansion, mingling transfers of capital with technological connexions in financial centres, generating urban margins with numerous inequalities.

This vast, disorderly movement transforms cities into ceaseless work sites, favouring imaginary deviations. The artists which then emerge are thus the flâneurs of the 21st century, the hackers of our responses to an urban environment which is often functional and standardized.

However, as visitors stroll through the exhibition aisles, they quickly realize that these megacities are not the subject of the “City Prince/sses” exhibition. They are in fact a context of research, a playground, where creators sample the multiple layers that constitute it to extract an excessive hybridization, in constant metamorphosis.

Raw and head-spinning hangings, mysterious landscapes, luminous or opaque zones, backrooms and traps: the presentation of the show has been conceptualised by the architect Olivier Goethals, according to the rhythms of day and night, from profusion to desaturation, alternating between monographic zones and terrains for encounters. He has elaborated an architectural pathway which reveals and accentuates the lines of force in the building, which is here being envisaged as an immense common area.

Guest artists : Aderemi Adegbite, Mehraneh Atashi, Shishir Bhattacharjee, Biquini Wax EPS, Britto Arts Trust, Chelsea Culprit, Ndidi Dike, Doktor Karayom, Ema Edosio, Kadara Enyeasi, Falz, Dex Fernandez, Dina Gadia, Betzabé García, David Griggs, Ha.Mü, Timmy Harn, La Havi, Amir Kamand, Hoda Kashiha, Lulu (Chris Sharp, Martin Soto Climent et leurs artistes), Tala Madani, Farrokh Mahdavi, Pow Martinez, Arash Nassiri, Leeroy New, Emeka Ogboh, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Adeola Olagunju, Ashfika Rahman, Mahbubur Rahman, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, John Jayvee del Rosario & Maine Magno, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Reetu Sattar, Mamali Shafahi, Reza Shafahi, Justin Shoulder, Mohammad Shoyeb, Manuel Solano, Newsha Tavakolian, Stephen Tayo, Tercerunquinto, Timmy Harn, Traición, Wafflesncream, Maria Jeona Zoleta, Zombra

 

Curator: Hugo Vitrani
Associate curator: Fabien Danesi
Scenographer: Olivier Goethals

www.palaisdetokyo.com

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IncarNations proposes an alternate approach to the current tendency to appreciate African art on the basis of its aesthetic quality, origin, and ethnographic context. An Afrocentric approach – ‘African art as philosophy’ – takes as reference the thought of Léopold Sedar Senghor and its analysis by philosopher Souleymane BachirDiagne.

In order to understand art, it is important to apprehend the work’s context, including its spiritual context. An African mask, for example, created to bring about a symbolic transformation, allowed its wearer to incarnate a deity. This same spiritual strength is embodied in both classical and contemporary works.

Kendell Geers’ work Twilight of the Idols, a small magico-religious statuette wrapped in hazard warning tape, welcomes visitors. This piece, which brings together classical and contemporary art, forms the key to the exhibition, with its complex spiritual powers and stratification.

The route flows organically through themes such as animism, Negritude, feminism, identity, masquerade, performativity, fetish, liberation movements, masking traditions and spirit. The classical works are given a central place as spiritual keepers of the exhibition around which the contemporary works are orchestrated. Bruno De Veth’s scenography, a contrasted compilation of image, sound and colour, evokes associations with the dynamic bustle of an African metropolis and underpins the vitality of the works on display.

“In IncarNations, Sindika Dokolo and Kendell Geers question the complexity of African identity from a resolutely Afrocentric perspective”.

After all, Africa is an old continent of 54 countries, thousands of living languages and dialects, traditions, and as much contrasts and multiplicities. The African spirit followed its diasporas via the slave, colonial, trade and exile routes and spread world-wide. It influenced Brazilian, Cuban, European and American traditions. And thus paradoxically, African arts defy all geographical definitions because of the importance of diasporas from this continent. Therefore, to build a collection which claims an African identity raises the core question of ‘what is African art ?’’

*More details on this event → HERE

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I

n recent years, there has been increased awareness of Muslim consumers as an important segment of the global fashion industry. With more than 1.8 billion practicing Muslims worldwide the diversity of clothing styles is highly nuanced. In the West, however, the image of Muslim women is often monochromatic. San Francisco and Frankfurt are particularly suitable locations to present the topic of this exhibition. Both cities are characterized by great cultural and ethnic diversity. Around 250,000 Muslim men and women live in the Bay Area today. The Fine Arts Museums are thus located in a region with one of the largest Muslim communities in the USA. As a central trade hub in Europe, Frankfurt is one of the most international cities in Germany with a population consisting of 53 percent foreigners and Germans with a so-called migrant background. Visible Muslims have been an integral part of the cityscape in both San Francisco and Frankfurt for decades.

It is in this cosmopolitan context and following its success at the Young Museum in San Francisco that the exhibition “Contemporary Muslim Fashions” is coming to Europe; and will be held from April 5 to September 1, 2019 at the Angewandte Kunst Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Discover through our itinerary the main axes of this museum exhibition.

Welcome in the world of Modest Fashion

At the beginning of the exhibition, a selection of ensembles will immerse the visitor in the world of Modest Fashion. The combination of stylish designs and different degrees of covering has left an impressive mark on the western fashion world in recent years. On the market for fashion, both up-and-coming and established Muslim and non-Muslim fashion designers today meet internationally active Western fashion companies that have recognized the significance of the market for themselves and produce corresponding fashion collections. This market has an annual turnover of around 44 billion dollars.

In addition, Modest Fashion Weeks take place worldwide, offering designers stages for their collections, while at the same time more and more Muslim Modest Fashion designers are making their way into the world of Western mainstream fashion. The rise of this fashion sector is often seen in connection with the purchasing power of Muslim women, but is also attributed to a generation of self-determined young Muslim women who are active as fashion bloggers and social media influencers while shaping new narratives of Muslim women identity.

An exploration of the different forms of covering

Throughout the exhibition space Contemporary Muslim Fashions explores different forms of covering, looking specifically at headscarves, perhaps the most recognizable element of a Muslim woman’s dress. It is important to note that not all Muslim women wear a hijab (headscarf), and even fewer a niqab (face veil). In fact, the number of Muslim women who consistently wear a headscarf in the United States has remained at about 40% for the past decade. The garment is worn for various reasons including personal piety, community conventions, or a variety of political positions.

The exhibition’s regional explorations begin in the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East, with the work of designers such as Faiza Bouguessa, Mashael Alrajhi, and Wadha Al Hajri, who are taking regional garments and making them uniquely their own. The traditional abaya—a simple, loose black garment designed to cover the body from neck to feet—has received contemporary updates by designers whose experiences are informed by their own transcontinental lifestyles and fashion educations. With a centuries-old history, today’s abayas reveal the infusion of regional textile traditions and global fashion trends to form new garments that appeal to both local and global audiences.

Much more than just head coverings

Photographs by artists including Alessia Gammarota, Rania Matar, and Tanya Habjouqa illustrate the high degree of diversity in head coverings (and lack thereof) across regions, generations, and individuals. The topic is critically explored by the documentary photographs of Hengameh Golestan.

As the Islamic revolution deposed the last Persian monarch and brought about a new Islamic government in Iran in 1979, Hengameh Golestan started documenting the country’s unrest. On International Women’s Day, March 8, 1979, she captured these images “as documents of demonstrations of women against the legislative changes that were introduced shortly after the establishment of the Islamic republic. One of these related to the compulsory veiling of women . . . in all public spaces.”

These protests continued for several days and attracted hundreds of thousands of women. As reminders of this event, the images have achieved recent new significance in the wake of renewed protests against the mandatory covering of women in Iran. The images are complimented by a twitter video showing Vida Movahedi protesting against the mandatory covering of women in Iran.

New approach to Muslim fashion

In the next part of the exhibition a selection of garments made by Muslims now living in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as Brooklyn-based Céline Semaan Vernon of Slow Factory and Saiqa Majeed of Saiqa London, will show how migration and relocation have also shaped social and religious practices and dress codes. For example, Slow Factory recently partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to create a collection in direct response to President Trump’s “Muslim ban.”

To explore the rise of Muslim consumer culture, a section of the exhibition will showcase affordable luxury, fast fashion, and sportswear that cater to a modest clientele, including designs by Sarah Elenany and Barjis Chohan as well as Nike’s Pro Hijab and burkinis by Shereen Sabet and Aheda Zanetti.

Continuing to Indonesia, Contemporary Muslim Fashions explores the rich textile and costume traditions of a country that is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, and whose designers, such as Itang Yunasz, Khanaan Luqman Shamlan, and NurZahra, employ luxurious fabrics in vibrant colors and complex patterns in their modest-wear designs.

Similar trends are found in neighboring Malaysia, where an explosion of social media platforms and e-commerce has produced a rapidly growing market for halal (referring to something permissible by Islamic law) beauty, technology, food, and fashion, such as Blancheur, as well as a high demand for bespoke looks catering to a Muslim elite represented by leading designers Melinda Looi, Bernard Chandran, and FIZIWOO.

A dynamic online community

“The transnational reach of modest Muslim fashion is astounding,” says consulting curator Reina Lewis, Professor of Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. “In Muslim-majority countries and diasporic minority contexts, Muslim modest fashionistas draw on a mood board of global Muslim fashion inspiration from past and present to create new forms of fusion fashion that travel the world through social media and community and family connections.”

Muslim fashion is supported by a dynamic online community. Like many modest fashion bloggers, Muslim modest fashion influencers began their engagement with blogging and social media due to the perceived lack of diversity in mainstream media and retail outlets. Showcasing leaders such as Hoda Katebi, Leah Vernon, and Dian Pelangi via Instagram.

The exhibition will look at how personal style can serve as a launch pad for larger conversations that draw attention to issues of sustainability and gender, racial, and religious inequalities.“Muslim women have been early adopters of each new social media application as it has arrived,” says Laura L. Camerlengo, Associate Curator of Costume and Textile Arts. “For many modest dressers, fashion serves not only as a medium to share their personal style, but also for discussions about contemporary religious concerns and social injustices and as a tool for positive social change.”

 

A tension between occidental and Arab-Islamic ideology

Throughout the exhibition a selection of works by artists including Wesaam Al-Badry and Shirin Neshat critically explore questions regarding clothing regulations, patriarchal structures, foreign determination and attribution. The three photographs in Wesaam Al-Badry‘s (*1984) series Al-Kouture (2017) show women wearing a Niqab (face veil), each made of silk scarves from the iconic high-end brands Chanel, Valentino, and Gucci.

For the Iraq- born artist, who relocated in the Midwest of the United States in the 1990s, the series reveals a tension between occidental and Arab-Islamic ideology that is shaped by Western consumer culture that influences traditional Muslim culture. Al-Badry uses his works to explore the dissonance between his experiences in the Middle East and those in Central America by addressing common notions of identity, war, and Islamophobia.

The work Turbulent (1998) is part of a video trilogy by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, in which she traces the tensions between female and male experience as well as between individual identity and group identity. The artist worked with Iranian artists and musicians in exile. While the singer Shoja Azari performs a song about eroticism and spiritual longing in front of a large audience, the singer Sussan Deyhim, dressed in a black chador, stands in an empty theatre hall and sings a self-composed melody with a throaty voice, which manages without words. With this, the artist refers to a ban imposed in the course of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, after which women were no longer allowed to sing in public.

 

Muslim high-end fashion designs

The exhibition’s final section explores high-end fashion designs that have been customized to accommodate Muslim women’s diverse modesty considerations.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, elite Muslim clients have been important patrons for the couture houses of Paris, where designs were often adapted for regional and religious sensibilities. True to the spirit of couture, this industry has long shown a willingness to modify its creations to suit the needs of clients who wish to dress modestly. Today, this tradition continues among the Western fashion design houses that offer special collections for Ramadan and Eid, such as Oscar de la Renta, as well as retailers that collaborate with international brands to form modest capsule collections, such as The Modist.

 

Enthusiasm beyond the religious context

The growing desire for modest and stylish fashions by Muslim women has given rise to a market that serves diverse needs beyond Muslim communities. At the same time, there is a growing number of non-Muslim women who prefer clothing labelled as “modest” by relevant fashion houses because they appreciate the more discreet emphasis on the body and/or see this as an emancipatory act in relation to a more Western, body-focused ideal image of women.

“Modest Fashion” is not synonymous with wearing a headscarf, a burka or a Nikab. It is also not necessarily associated with religiousness – no matter what kind – but corresponds to a certain idea of revealing or concealing physicality. In regards to the exhibition, Max Hollein sums this up when he says: “Fashion is the extroverted form of expression of a cultural state. The rest is a question of perspective“.

 

As the first museum in Europe and the only station in Germany, the team of the Museum Angewandte Kunst has developed an extension of the exhibition that explicitly deals with the phenomenon of contemporary Muslim fashion in German-speaking countries. On show are ensembles of the designers Naomi Afia (Vienna), Feyza Baycelebi (Berlin/Istanbul), Imen Bousnina (Vienna) and Mizaan (Mannheim).

 

www.museumangewandtekunst.de

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Who are they, who are these forgotten actors of the great story of the avant-garde?

In about thirty years, “the representation of Blacks” has become a very active historical object on both sides of the Atlantic, and the number of works related to “black studies” has increased. A first name or a nickname, has long been enough, at best, to designate them… They aim, to a significant extent, to show how the world of images was part of the historical process defined by the establishment of the slave trade, the gradual emergence from slavery and finally the slow affirmation of a black identity.Gradually, however, workshop models will move out of their precarious status and become women and men in their own right.

No exhibition to date has attempted to explore this phenomenon of centuries-old civilization through the abundant iconography, all media combined, that it has generated…

Even if we stick to the period that saw the French Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, The Black Model, from Géricault to Matisse, aims to demonstrate how the imagery of individuals of colour has been constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years. Co-organized with the Wallach Art Gallery in New York, the Musée d’Orsay exhibition therefore focuses on the changes that affected the way black subjects were represented, which played a founding role in the development of modern art.

The subject is based on the most revealing works of Girodet, Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Géricault, Delacroix, Cordier, Carpeaux, Manet, Bazille, Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse (before and after her visits to Harlem in 1930), integrates photography (Nadar, Carjat.), and particularly highlights the work of black artists, Harlem Renaissance (Charles Alston, William H. Johnson…) and post-war generations, Romare Bearden, Ellen Gallagher and Aimé Mpane to this day.

Priority is given to dialogue between the artist who paints, sculpts, engraves or photographs and his model

By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, between art history, history of ideas and anthropology, this exhibition explores aesthetic, political, social and racial issues, as well as the imagination inherent in the representation of black figures in the visual arts. The exhibition, without breaking a narrative, focuses on three main moments: the time of abolition (1794-1848), the time of the New Painting (Manet, Bazille, Degas, Cézanne), the time of the first avant-garde of the 20th century.

A particular development is reserved for Olympia and its avatars, as well as Matisse’s discovery of the Renaissance Harlem and his fascination for creolity, echoing Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, a book he illustrated during the German occupation. Women and men of colour, many of them have crossed paths with artists, painters, sculptors and photographers, of whom we are the direct heirs.

From ignorance to recognition, no other exhibition has ever retraced this long process and attempted to describe a dialogue that is now central to the life of the arts. Discover without delay, this exceptional exhibition of the Musée d’Orsay in the city of Paris (France) visible until July 21, 2019.

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Curators

Cécile Debray, chief heritage curator, director of the Musée de l’Orangerie
Stéphane Guégan, scientific advisor to the president of the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie Denise Murrell, Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Wallach Art Gallery, Isolde Pludermacher, chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay

→ www.musee-orsay.fr

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