MUSEUM GEOGRAPHIES

The following article written by art historian Yvette Greslé presents a very detailed, beautifully written and carefully considered critique of Brett Bailey’s ‘Exhibit B’ project – which also (in turn) cites curator and academic Okwui Enwezor’s well-informed words of wisdom: “Despite the sincerity of the artists who have brazenly maintained a relationship in their work with the black body, there is a certain over-determination that accompanies their gestures. They seem to neglect the fact that the black form is as much a grotesque bearer of traumatised experiences as it is the abject vessel of race as a point of differentiation. More than alerting us to how the stereotype fixes its objects of desire in that freeze-frame of realism, as prior knowledge, the work of these artists exacerbates the stereotype by replaying it, perhaps unconsciously, as if it had always been factual.”…

Twenty Pound Spectacle: Brett Bailey (Exhibit B).