About the exhibition
Scrawlspace* was a group exhibition co-curated with Emily Alesandrini at The 8th Floor Gallery in Manhattan. On view from September 19 through December 7, 2024, the show presented artwork by contemporary artists of Black African descent who visually re/work and re/imagine language and text in their practices—exposing both the limits and liberatory potential of words. Their practices cite traditions of employing alternative alphabets and grammars that subverted the strictures and oppressions embedded in language and writing systems. These methods include employing quilts, hair, and drums to communicate coded messages; publishing narratives to assert authority and autonomy over one’s life story; and mobilizing fiction and poetry to express complexity, pleasure, and identity beyond the body.
Similarly seeking new possibilities for and beyond writing, some artists in Scrawlspace look to shifts and slippages in vocabularies and grammars to expose how language is tied to structures of power. Some artists annotate and obscure words and documents to intervene into difficult histories, writing against the threat of state surveillance and the silences in the archive. Others render phrases and words illegible, glyphic, or coded to the point that letters and graphic gestures no longer constitute language but become images, demonstrating an opacity, complexity, and multiplicity of meanings beyond sanctioned readings and definitions. Yet, cryptic and unconventional mark-making also serves to circumvent these systems of oppression and map routes to liberation. Artists thus demonstrate how language can be utilized in acts of refusal and as instruments in community and world-building.
Featured artists included: Sadie Barnette, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Sonya Clark, Tony Cokes, Renee Gladman, Steffani Jemison, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jamilah Sabur, Gary Simmons, Shinique Smith.
*A special thanks to Hortense Spillers, Fred Moten, and Harryette Mullen, whose writings and correspondence inspired the title and concepts of the exhibition.
