"Nari Ward’s Transcendant Trash at the New Museum"

In 2013, the New Museum organized a show called “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star,” which included two works by Nari Ward, a Jamaica-born artist living in Harlem. The exhibit borrowed its title from the 1993 Sonic Youth album and was intended as a “time capsule” documenting the New York art scene of the early ‘90s. This art was, according to a review in the New York Times, “of unusually urgent moral and political texture.”

Today, visitors have another chance to see “Amazing Grace” and other works by Ward in his first museum survey, “We the People,” which occupies three floors at the New Museum. On view through May 26, this exhibit brings into focus the discarded, the displaced, and the disenfranchised. Ward’s work, often composed of scavenged materials, explores themes of the African diaspora, the history of Harlem, and the economic inequality of late-capitalism. Though the large sculptures and immersive installations are the strongest, the survey also includes a few copper sheet paintings, photographs, and videos.

The installation “Amazing Grace” uses abandoned strollers, well over 100, which Ward collected in and around Harlem. These worn strollers crowd the dimmed room and, absent of children and mothers and anyone else, acquire a profound, mortal weight, like nameless gravestones. “Amazing Grace,” sung by the popular gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in a bluesy rendition, plays on loop and furthers the eerie atmosphere. One teeters through, as if in a strange procession, on an uneven, ovular path, made of fire hose, that, on top of an already disturbed mind, physically unsettles the viewer. One would be hard-pressed to take a second lap through the haunting installation.

Also on the second floor is an equally immersive but more light-hearted installation called “Hunger Cradle,” 1996. Here, we enter the web of a giant spider on a diet of skittles that spins a rainbow-colored nest made of yarn. Caught in its web are yes, you guessed it, more scavenged materials. But these too have a story. Tenuously supported, we see a broken piano, buckets, and tires, all of which were sourced from a run-down firehouse in Harlem where this piece was first exhibited. Each iteration of “Hunger Cradle” cocoons new materials, gathered from the surrounding area, making “Hunger Cradle” a chronicle of changing urban landscapes and offers, at least in New York, a visual and arresting narrative of rampant gentrification.

“Carpet Angel,” 1992, a two-part sculpture featuring a pyre-like mound on the ground and a suspended figure, was also included in the “Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star” exhibit from 2013. Ward created this piece on the heels of a residency at the prestigious Studio Museum in Harlem, his then-new neighborhood. Made of carpets left by the previous tenant, “Carpet Angel” is deliberately composed and yet, because the materials are so lightly groomed, retains a rough, frazzled air about it.

On the ground is an ovular mound of carpets rolled up and hastily stacked against one another, as if fuel for a giant pyre. Suspended above is an angelic figure, plastic arms extended outward that, to my mind, is strong enough to stand alone without the distraction of the tactile trash below. Draped over the glass-blue figure is a woven net that makes its arms appear webbed or winged. The figure could suggest spiritual ascendance, but, judging by Ward’s politically conscious works, a more realistic interpretation is of a captured angel, netted just before takeoff.

On the fourth floor, one encounters the Apollo Theater, a cultural landmark that has played host to some of our nation’s greatest talents, including Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr. and others. Ward created “Apollo/Poll,” 2017, a replica of the iconic Apollo Theater sign that, like American democracy, is purposely rigged, especially against people of color. The first and last letters (“A” and “O”) blink on and off so that, at times, the sign reads, “Poll,” a reference, no doubt, to the poll tax. The poll tax, along with literacy tests and other means of intimidation, was levied against African-Americans to disenfranchise them from the right to vote until 1964, the year after Ward was born, when it was finally ruled illegal.

Ward has always worked with found materials, but the stories Ward tells with those materials have widened in scope as his career progressed. Ward’s later work, while still reflecting its origins, reflects a sharpened political acumen and offers a powerful commentary on systemic issues like poverty and global histories like that of the African diaspora.

Nari Ward: We the People is on view at the New Museum in New York City through May 26, 2019.

https://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/3596613/nari-wards-transcendant-trash-at-the-new-museum?utm_source=Blouin+Artinfo+Newsletters&utm_campaign=682cf9034f-Daily+Digest+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_df23dbd3c6-682cf9034f-83005727