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Hannah Black

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Hannah Black
Born
Manchester, London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationWhitney Independent Study Program, New York, 2014
Goldsmiths, University of London, (MFA) 2013
Alma materUniversity of London
Known forFilm, video, art and writing
Notable workDark Pool Party
StyleMixed media artist
WebsiteVimeo accountTwitter account

Hannah Black is a conceptual artist and writer. She is one of the fresh faces of artists emerging as "artist-cum-theorist-cum-writer-cum-curators" in the post internet contemporary art world.[1] Through multiple mediums her work addresses race, gender, class, pop culture, capital, and other modern issues.[2] Hannah Black explores her own struggles with her identity and finding a separation between herself and the modern world.[3]

Early life

Childhood

Hannah Black was born in Manchester, England in 1981.[4] She is a British born black artist and writer who spent much of her time in London.[5] Her experiences growing and evolving as a modern black woman inspires her work and her influence in the art world.[citation needed]

Education

Throughout her childhood education she attended mostly white schools; she believes this changed her view of her race, and this is a topic that she continues to explore within her art and writing.[citation needed] Black dropped out of film school to start attending Goldsmith's University of London where she completed her Master of Fine Arts in writing in 2013.[6] She participated in the Whitney Independent Study Programme in New York from 2013-2014.[7]

Artistic Work

Black works with writing, video, performance art, and installation art.[8]

Video and Installation

Hannah Black addresses societal concerns onto the body, as well as many societal critiques. For example, in 2016 she unveiled a video titled Credits which addresses debt as a form of humiliation.[9] In interviews, Black often refers to her videos as the failures of her essays and vice versa.[10] Black lets her ideas transform into the media that fits the content best. Her writing often takes the form of a polished essay, whereas her videos are more unfinished, unresolved, but purposeful.[11] For example, her essay K in Love for The New Inquiry is a failed video, as Black describes, or at least an unfinished one; like many of her works this idea transformed mediums as the idea emerged as video and ended in writing.[12] Similarly, Black's video My Bodies started out as a “failed” essay; she describes how she had really great material about ‘this idea that if we were to abolish gender […] it would involve a complete re-imagining of the conceptual train of the body, an unthinking or de-creating of this idea of having a body” but that it was unable to fully manifest within an essay, so instead she made a video.[13] Black's openness to a dynamic movement between medias is what allows for her strong stances to be portrayed in the most efficient way.[14] When Black has an idea, she allows the idea to unspool and transform into the media it belongs, be it video, writing, or installation. Black's videos often hold a rawness that's refreshing but also self-reflective.[15]

Writing

Hannah Black describes her writing and her art as a continuous narrative. Black explains that her writing was born out of a specific period in her life, where she was discovering her own womanhood and sexual orientation.[16] Black explains she never strongly identified with being a woman, as she has always had a mild gender dysphoric idea of her womanhood. Hannah Black explains her stress: “I dated men but found it stressful and tended to ascribe that stress to myself in terms of I am not good at being a woman. And that was partly about race of course; I went to a very white high school, so I didn’t have a lot of images of what it was like to be both a woman and a mixed-race black person […] I had this sort of slightly tragic relationship to blackness”.[17] It is this internal struggle that Black faces that fuels her writing, and art. Black struggles with cohering all her theoretical ideas into a medium. To outweigh this struggle, Black openly accepted unconditional ways to explain her ideas: “as much as the video is an oblique take on [her ideas], for me it really expresses what I was trying to say”.[18]

Other Works

Hannah Black in recent years has expanded her media to include latex drawings, hangings, and tapestries; Black describes the new media “as linked and there’s often a literal bleed between them—[this is] something that I can’t accomplish in one medium". [19] For Black, the discovery of different mediums is never ending. As Black continues to discover her identity as an artist, she has been drawn more to latex sculptures: “there was something quite enabling to me about […] being able to do these latex sculptures and latex hangings. It made me feel like it was fine to do something messy and handmade […] and it was true—the experience of cutting latex by hand is quite intense, and evokes, for me, anyways, this self-harm/emo kind of thing, but also kind of a loving gesture”.[20] Hannah Black's relationship between what media she chooses to express a particular idea is crucial to the meaning of the work.

Common Themes

Hannah Black is very interested in exploring her own corporality and the social rules placed on her race and her body.[21] She often begins with radical feminist views, mixed with and inflected by Marxism, and critical race theory. She uses her artistic practice to explore these ideas and reflect how global developments and social pressures are inscribed into our bodies as humans. [22] Her art and writing reflect on transnational relationships of capital, power dynamics, and radical race and feminist theory.[23] She explains the “body becomes a trap for social role ascriptions that allow no alternatives” and this is what frustrates her.[24] Within her work, Black is very interested in overlaps between social coercion, world and personal history; to explain these overlaps Black combines and connects her autobiographical experiences with theory (often focusing on the effect of external appearances such as age, gender and skin color).[25] As an on-the-rise controversial artist, Black explores separation of self from our current world.[26]

Career

Shows/Exhibitions

Hannah Black has exhibited her video work and installations in a number of galleries. She spends most of her time working in Berlin, London, and New York.[27] Some of her exhibitions included those at the New Museum and Interstate Projects (NY), Arcadia Missa, DRAF and Legion TV (London), Chateau Whitechapel, the Showroom and Café Oto (London), Flutgraben and Societe (Berlin), and the New Museum and Lisa Cooley (NY).[28] Hannah Black has collaborated with musician Bonventure to perform shows at the ICA, the Berlin Biennale, and at Bloc in Hackney Wick.[29] Black's writing has been published multiple times; she has been featured in The New Inquiry, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst and Fireze (DE) as well as other magazines.[30] Hannah Black wrote a book titled Dark Pool Party which was published in February 2016 and featured in Arcadia Missa.[31]

Controversy

Hannah Black recently caused an uproar within the artistic community when she openly expressed her desire for the removal and destruction of fellow artist Dana Schutz's painting Open Casket (2016) that was featured at the Whitney Biennial.[32] Black wrote a letter to the Whitney curators, Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, arguing that the painting shows white insensitivity, as it is a painting of a dead Black boy, painted by a white artist.[33] Most of the controversy is surrounding Black's demands for the painting to not only be removed from the exhibit, but to be destroyed; she explains “that its an example of unacceptable practice of white artists transmuting black suffering into profit, its not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun”.[34] She further explained on her Facebook page after her comments sparked controversy, by explaining “white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go".[35] Black sparked protestors to stand in front of Schutz's painting for hours, keeping it blocked from view with T-shirts marked with the words “Black Death Spectacle” until the museum closed.[36] The art was not removed as Whitney Biennale curators responded with “as curators of this exhibition we believe in providing a museum platform for artists to explore these critical issues".[37]

Partial exhibition history

Solo/duo exhibitions

  • Some Context, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2017)[38]
  • Small Room, mumok, Vienna (2017)[39]
  • Soc or Barb, Bodega, New York (2017)[40]
  • Paris Internationale (with Amalia Ulman), Arcadia Missa, Paris (2016)[41]
  • Screens Series: Hannah Black, New Museum Theater, New York (2016)[42]
  • Credits, Big Screen Commission Focal Point Gallery, Southend-On-Sea (2016)
  • Hannah Black & Letitia Beatriz, Transmission, Glasgow (2016)
  • Credits, Lisa Cooley, New York (2016)
  • Not You, Arcadia Missa, London (2015)
  • Intensive Care, Legion TV, London (2013)

Group exhibitions

  • If you want to do something, forget this debt, and remember it later, Celaya Brothers Gallery, Mexico City (2017)[43]
  • Being There, Vilma Gold, London (2016)[44]
  • The world no longer exists, *kurator, Rapperswil (2016)[45]
  • No! I Am No Singular Instrument, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2016)[46]
  • The fraud that goes under the name of love, Audain, Vancouver (2016)[47]
  • WHATEVER MOVES BETWEEN US ALSO MOVES THE WORLD IN GENERAL, Murray Guy, New York (2016)
  • WELT AM DRAHT, Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin, Berlin (2016)
  • Open Source, Gillett Square, London (2016)[48]
  • On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday, The Kitchen, New York (2016)[49]
  • Reena’s Bedstuy Glove Affair, offsite, New York (2016)
  • Ways of Living, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016)[50]
  • Active Ingredient, Lisa Cooley, New York (2016)
  • In the Flesh Part 2, Gallery Diet, Miami (2016)
  • 500 boxes of contraband, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow (2016)
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku (2015)[51]
  • Workland: The Fence Is A Narrow Place, Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles (2015)[52]
  • Does Not Equal, W139, Amsterdam (2015)[53]
  • Girls of the Internet Museum, Sala Luis Miro Quesada Garland, Lima (2015)

Performances/screenings/talks

  • OR LIFE OR, performance in collaboration with Bonaventure and Ebba Fransén Waldhör, MoMA PS1, New York (2017)[54][55][56]
  • Screen: Hannah Black, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017)[57]
  • APOCALYPTIC THINKING WITH HANNAH BLACK AND EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York (2016)[58]
  • Anxietina, performance with Bonaventure, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2016)[59]
  • Capacity, This is Public Space, Up Projects, London (2016)
  • Finding the Body: The Last Transgression?, Central Saint Martins, London (2016)
  • What Time Is It on the Clock of the World?, Stadtkuratorin Hamburg, Hamburg (2016)
  • Recognizing, Imagining, Relation, Hester, New York (2016)
  • Blackness in Circulation, Open Score, New Museum, New York (2016)
  • Edition, Toronto (2016)
  • YES SCREAMING NO, The One Minutes, Intersections, ArtRotterdam, NL (2015)
  • Perspectives, Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2015)
  • Fall of Communism, Image Festival winner, Overkill Award, Toronto (2015)
  • Canon Today, TZK Gala Conference, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin (2015)
  • In conversation with Andrea Crespo, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York (2015)
  • 7 on 7, New Museum, New York (2015)
  • Biocode, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2015)
  • Projections Program C, New York Film Festival, New York (2015)
  • Screening #1 London, Schwarzwallee, Basel
  • Total Body Conditioning, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2014)
  • City Built At Night, Rematerialising Feminism, Arcadia Missa, London (2014)
  • Columbine Library, Societe, with Bunny Rogers, Berlin (2014)

Partial publication history

Publications

Essays

References

  1. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  2. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  3. ^ Hursh, Keenan. “Or Life Or.” 21stCentury Digital Art: A Collaborative Survey of Digital Art Made Since 2000, June 4, 2017.
  4. ^ Artspace. “Hannah Black.” Artists. Last modified 2017.
  5. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  6. ^ Artspace. “Hannah Black.” Artists. Last modified 2017.
  7. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  8. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  9. ^ Aima, Rahel. “Body Party: Hannah Black.” Mousse Magazine, March 2017.
  10. ^ Aima, Rahel. “Body Party: Hannah Black.” Mousse Magazine, March 2017.
  11. ^ Aima, Rahel. “Body Party: Hannah Black.” Mousse Magazine, March 2017.
  12. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  13. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  14. ^ Hursh, Keenan. “Or Life Or.” 21stCentury Digital Art: A Collaborative Survey of Digital Art Made Since 2000, June 4, 2017.
  15. ^ Aima, Rahel. “Body Party: Hannah Black.” Mousse Magazine, March 2017.
  16. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  17. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  18. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  19. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  20. ^ Black, Hannah. “An interview with Hannah Black.” Interview by Eva Folks. Interviews, AQNB, June 26, 2014. Text.
  21. ^ Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. “Hannah Black.” Events. Last modified March 17, 2017.
  22. ^ Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. “Hannah Black.” Events. Last modified March 17, 2017.
  23. ^ Aima, Rahel. “Body Party: Hannah Black.” Mousse Magazine, March 2017.
  24. ^ Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. “Hannah Black.” Events. Last modified March 17, 2017.
  25. ^ Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. “Hannah Black.” Events. Last modified March 17, 2017.
  26. ^ Hursh, Keenan. “Or Life Or.” 21stCentury Digital Art: A Collaborative Survey of Digital Art Made Since 2000, June 4, 2017.
  27. ^ Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. “Hannah Black.” Events. Last modified March 17, 2017.
  28. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  29. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  30. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  31. ^ Goldsmiths University of London. “Contemporary Art Talks: HANNAH BLACK.” Accessed September 27, 2018.
  32. ^ Trouillot, Terence. “Hannah Black Transcends the Dana Schultz Controversy with a Slow-Burn MoMA PS1  Performance.” MOMUS, April 12, 2017.
  33. ^ Fusco, Coco. “Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go: On Dana Schutz’s Image of Emmett Till.” Hyperallergic, March 27, 2017.
  34. ^ Fusco, Coco. “Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go: On Dana Schutz’s Image of Emmett Till.” Hyperallergic, March 27, 2017.
  35. ^ Kennedy, Randy. “White Artist’s Painting of Emmett Till at Whitney Biennial Draws Protest.” New York Times, March 21, 2017.
  36. ^ Munoz-Alonso,Lorena. “Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till at Whitney biennale sparks protest.” Artnet News, March 21, 2017.
  37. ^ Munoz-Alonso,Lorena. “Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till at Whitney biennale sparks protest.” Artnet News, March 21, 2017.
  38. ^ "Hannah Black". chisenhale.org.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  39. ^ "Hannah Black". www.mumok.at. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  40. ^ "Bodega". bodega-us.org. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  41. ^ "Paris Internationale 2016, Arcadia Missa". Arcadia Missa. Retrieved 2018-04-08.
  42. ^ "Screens Series: Hannah Black". www.newmuseum.org. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  43. ^ "If you want to do something, forget this debt, and remember it later - Celaya Brothers Gallery". www.celayabrothersgallery.com. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  44. ^ "Vilma Gold – Being There". vilmagold.com. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  45. ^ www.kurator.ch. "kurator.ch  » The world no longer exists". www.kurator.ch (in German). Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  46. ^ "No! I am No Singular Instrument - Various Small Fires, Los Angeles". Various Small Fires, Los Angeles. 2016-05-24. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  47. ^ "The Fraud - SFU Galleries - Simon Fraser University". www.sfu.ca. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  48. ^ "OPEN SOURCE is a contemporary arts festival". OPEN SOURCE. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  49. ^ "The Kitchen: On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday". thekitchen.org. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  50. ^ "Exhibition: Curators' Series #9. Ways of Living. By Arcadia Missa (15 Apr – 23 Jul 2016) | DRAF – David Roberts Art Foundation". DRAF – David Roberts Art Foundation. 2015-11-13. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  51. ^ "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter | Yarat Contemporary Art Space | Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  52. ^ "Workland: the fence is a narrow place | Chateau Shatto". chateaushatto.com. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  53. ^ "W139 - Does Not Equal". w139.nl. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  54. ^ "Hannah Black's Performance "OR LIFE OR" at MoMA PS1". artnet News. 2017-04-11. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  55. ^ "Hannah Black, OR LIFE OR | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  56. ^ "Role Play: At MoMA PS1, Hannah Black Alights as Artist and Heroine | ARTnews". www.artnews.com. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  57. ^ "SCREEN: Hannah Black". The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  58. ^ "Conversation | Apocalyptic Thinking with Hannah Black and Evan Calder Williams | Swiss Institute". www.swissinstitute.net. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  59. ^ "ANXIETINA: A performance by Hannah Black and Bonaventure". www.ica.art. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  60. ^ "Averting the end of the world: Hannah Black + Juliana Huxtable's LIFE book release + opening at Mumok, Mar 16". atractivoquenobello. 2017-03-16. Retrieved 2017-04-19.
  61. ^ "DOMINICA". dominicapublishing.com. Retrieved 2017-04-19.
  62. ^ Black, Hannah. "Coming to Terms". Bookforum. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  63. ^ "Tank Magazine". Tank Magazine. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  64. ^ Black, Hannah. "THE IDENTITY ARTIST AND THE IDENTITY CRITIC by Hannah Black". artforum.com. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  65. ^ Black, Hannah (2016-03-01). "A Kind of Grace". Harper's Magazine. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2017-04-19.
  66. ^ Black, Hannah. "Hannah Black on the 9th Berlin Biennale". artforum.com. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
  67. ^ https://www.textezurkunst.de/98/social-life/
  68. ^ https://thenewinquiry.com/essays/crazy-in-love/
  69. ^ https://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-loves-of-others/
  70. ^ Black, Hannah (2014-05-13). "My Gay Shame, or, How Patriarchy Stole Sex". The New Inquiry.
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