The Phillips Collection shines a light on Black American collage art

The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the United States, is currently presenting Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, heralded as the first major museum exhibition that examines collage art in relation to Black identity in the United States. Multiplicity is a travelling exhibition organised by the Frist Art Museum in Nashville. It was first shown at Frist from September 15 - December 31, 2023 and runs in Washington from July 6 - September 22, 2024, for the final leg of its journey. The show is curated by Katie Delmez, Senior Curator, Frist Art Museum and the organising curator for its Washington presentation is Adrienne L. Childs, Senior Consulting Curator, The Phillips Collection. The two join STIR in an interview that explores how the exhibiting artists have innovated through collage.

The Phillips Collection's presentation is intergenerational, including artists such as Lauren Halsey and Tay Butler who use cutouts from sources such as magazines, Rashid Johnson – whose work is reminiscent of mosaic art, Tschabalala Self who is famed for her depictions of Black women and multimedia artist Sanford Biggers.

Identity is never one thing. It's never easy to read on the surface. – Adrienne L. Childs, Senior Consulting Curator, The Phillips Collection

As the show’s curators explain, the artists exhibited in Multiplicity tend to use collage materials they have a personal connection to. In Delmez’s words, “Artists like Tay Butler and others in the exhibition use specific materials that speak to their own identity and lived experience. An avid amateur basketball player and lifelong fan, Butler cuts out figures from his collection of trade magazines like SLAM (an American basketball magazine that has run since 1994) to explore the complex role that professional sports often play in the lives of Black men.” The curator also references Tschabalala Self, who incorporates materials such as pieces of her blue jeans and her mother’s tablecloth into her multimedia art compositions to connect her artistic expression to her identity.

Childs adds to this, explaining that the patchwork nature of collage art reflects the fragmented nature of human identity. As she tells STIR, “Identity is never one thing. It's never easy to read on the surface. The artists uncover the fragments that often make up identity and reassemble them in compelling ways.”

Collage making can also provide artists with an escape from flatness, as with Tschabalala Self, Derek Fordjour and Sanford Biggers, the latter among whom has presented work in atypical, polygonal framings reminiscent of American artist Mike Cloud. STIR interviewed Cloud previously, in an enlightening conversation that focuses on his collage making practice and his preference for nontraditional framing formats.

Delmez discusses the show’s interplay of flatness and texture, telling STIR, “A range of surfaces can be seen in the exhibition, from the relatively flat collages of Deborah Roberts, Derrick Adams and Nina Chanel Abney, who seem to go to great lengths to form a tight fusion between substrate and added paper or fabric, to more textured work by Derek Fordjour, who carves into his layered compilations as the last step of his labour intensive process, to create an undulating topography…”

The Phillips Collection’s show highlights the abundance of collage making in contemporary American art by Black artists and certainly does its titling justice through the diversity of approaches to collaging that are on display. Hopefully, Multiplicity will spark other contemporary art presentations of its kind and shall inspire other young artists to consider deeply the relationship between the materials they work with and their personal histories.

The artists being shown in Multiplicity also include Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Radcliffe Bailey, McArthur Binion, Brittney Boyd Bullock, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Andrea Chung, Jamal Cyrus, M. Florine Démosthène, Genevieve Gaignard, Lauren Halsey, Kahlil Robert Irving, Tomashi Jackson, Yashua Klos, YoYo Lander, Kerry James Marshall, Rod McGaha, Helina Metaferia, Wardell Milan, Joiri Minaya, Troy Montes-Michie, Devin N. Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Narcissister, Rashaad Newsome, Lovie Olivia, Ebony G. Patterson, Howardena Pindell, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Lanecia A. Rouse, Devan Shimoyama, David Shrobe, Lorna Simpson, Nyugen E. Smith, Paul Anthony Smith, Shinique Smith, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Didier William and Kandis Williams.

‘Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage’ runs at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC from July 6 - September 22, 2024.