HowDoYouSayYamInAfrican? is[1] a collective founded in 2013. The group, also called the YAMS Collective, was formed to bring a digital media piece titled Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera to the 2014 Whitney Biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial of contemporary art is an invitation-only exhibition which generally favors young artists and in the past helped bring greater recognition to artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Jeff Koons.[2] The Whitney Museum bills the event as: "...the longest-running survey of American art, and ...a hallmark of the Museum since 1932."[3] The Biennial has often faced criticism over issues of privilege, access and inclusivity.[4] The 2014 edition was especially controversial for many issues, including the Yams Collective.[5]

Yams Collective

The group started after one of the initial curation visits for the 2014 edition of the Biennial. One of the Biennial's co-curators, Michelle Grabner, had visited Sienna Shields in her studio and seen a short video loop the artist had made with friends dancing in front of glaciers in Alaska.[6] Shields organized the Yams Collective (short for HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?) of 38 international mostly black and queer musicians, poets, actors, writers and visual artists to create a digital film about racial identity for the 2014 edition.[6] Shields in part organized the collective to address representation in the New York art scene: "I’d go to art events, and I’d be the only black person in the room — here in New York. It was ridiculous."[6] This became the instigation for the collective's submission, a 53-minute digital piece in 35 parts titled Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera.[6] This participation was seen by the collective as an "infiltration" of the institutional art world and the very size of the collective was meant partly as a protest against tokenism.[7]

Donelle Woolford controversy

Despite the collective's diverse membership, one of only two individual black female artists invited that year was "Donelle Woolford", a creation of Joe Scanlan.[8] Scanlan, a white, male, Princeton University professor hired a succession of actresses to play "Woolford" at events. The inclusion of this "fake" artist led the Yams Collective to withdraw their submission, objecting to "Woolford's" inclusion in a show alongside their work.[9] Shields explained the withdrawal was due to not only Scanlan but also: "...the history of the Whitney and its lack of any kind of initiative in changing its white supremacist attitudes."[10] The collective also considered the inclusion of Scanlan to be a reflection of larger issues of racism in the elite art world.[7] The film instead premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?: Public Artist Lecture November 17, 2020".
  2. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (8 February 2014). "Seeking U.S. Art All Over Map. Just Check GPS". New York Times. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  3. ↑ "The Whitney Biennial". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  4. ↑ Bodick, Noelle (4 March 2014). "A Brief History of the Whitney Biennial, America's Most Controversial Art Show". Artspace. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  5. ↑ Kim, Eunsong; Mackrandilal, Maya Isabella (4 April 2014). "The Whitney Biennial for Angry Women". The New Inquiry. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Lee, Felicia R. (21 February 2014). "Singular Art, Made by Plurals Yams Collective Brings Work to Whitney Biennial". New York Times. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  7. 1 2 Davis, Ben (30 May 2014). "The Yams, on the Whitney and White Supremacy". artnet.news. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  8. ↑ Steinhauer, Jillian (15 November 2013). "The Depressing Stats of the 2014 Whitney Biennial". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  9. ↑ Heddaya, Mostafa (14 May 2014). "Artist Collective Withdraws from Whitney Biennial [Updated]". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  10. ↑ Pensky, Nathan (20 June 2014). "Race in the art world: The many faces of Joe Scanlan". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  11. ↑ Aftab, Kaleem (4 October 2014). "Opera hits wrong note". The Independent (UK).
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