A Nation Takes Place draws together a transnational collection of artwork by 38 artists to examine the connection between water and nation, water and sovereignty, and water and reimagined ecologies. While archives provide some access to the past, there are histories that have been erased, histories that remain inaccessible to language, and histories resistant to being written. In these gaps, the artists in A Nation Takes Place help us to fill in the spaces where words cannot. This exhibitions seeks to help us comprehend the complexity of the United States’ formation ,a project unthinkable without waterways, conquest, and slave ships. The artists approach maritime art looking toward the ways that the imaginaries of seafaring are tethered to the lethal technologies of enslavement, colonialism, genocide, dispossession and extraction.
A Nation Takes Place
Kent Monkman, Saving the New Comers, 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 84 × 126 in.
Calida Rawles, Our Grace, 2022. Jacquard tapestry. 96 × 78 in.
Katrina Andry, The Promise of the Rainbow Never Came #6, 2018.
Color reduction woodcut, woodcut, and mylar. 60 × 44 in.
Jacob Lawrence, Revolt on the Amistad, 1989. Color screenprint on wove paper. 40 1/8 × 32 1/8 in.
Gordon Coons, We Cannot Be Redacted, 2019. Relief print, 41.5 × 29.5 in.
Radcliffe Bailey, Creole, 2013. Steel. 70 × 60 × 20 in.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, Nkyinkyim: Forced, 2024. Concrete and Iron. 30 × 18 in.
Sokari Ekine, Takasa Wudo, 2017. Kenya. Archival inkjet print. 36 × 24 in.
See Also
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”