Thursday 31 March 2005 @ 6:15 p.m.
MILLENNIUM PARK ROOM, The Art Institute of Chicago Museum
Enter at 280 S. Columbus Drive (corner of Monroe and Columbus)
Los Angeles-based artist Kori Newkirk examines common cultural signifiers of particular African American communities, creating self-conscious visual puns out of plastic hair beads, braided hair extensions and pomade, basketballs, and elements of hip-hop fashion, among other things. Ironically pointing to the mythologies that revolve around these tropes, Newkirk-following in the footsteps of David Hammons and others-attempts to destabilize assumptions about identity.
Newkirk uses materials that emerged from the African-American experience as a medium to construct images of stereotypical white culture. While Newkirk considers himself a sculptor, he complements these works with photographs in which he pictures himself with his identity obscured, allowing his figure to function as a signifier of black people in general. Although his work is about blackness and place, its implications are never as simple as this pairing would
suggest.