CLEVELAND, OH.- Focusing on 15 talents whose works fuse art and fashion photography, The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion opens conversations about the representation of the Black body and Black lives as subjects in art. The exhibition features the work of Black photographers, stylists, and models and celebrates Black creativity and the blending of art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image.
The New Black Vanguard is on view in the
Cleveland Museum of Art’s Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery from May 8 to September 11, 2022.
“The New Black Vanguard focuses on contemporary portrayals of Black figures and reframes established representational patterns,” said William M. Griswold, director of the Cleveland Museum of Art. “The international photographers and stylists in this stunning exhibition reinforce the significance of the Black creator and model. The show embodies our commitment to the vibrant arts of Africa and the African diaspora, and it foregrounds fashion as a theme central to the work of some of our newest curatorial voices.”
The New Black Vanguard seeks to challenge the idea that Blackness is homogenous; the works serve as a form of visual activism. The results—often made in collaboration with Black stylists and fashion designers—present new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race and beauty, gender and power. The men and women whose art is on view work in vastly different contexts, from New York City and Johannesburg to Lagos and London. They have been featured in traditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns and museums, as well as on their individual social media channels.
The exhibition is organized by Aperture, New York, and curated by curator and critic Antwaun Sargent. The Cleveland Museum of Art has added a unique complement to the photographs on the walls that will be seen only in Cleveland: mannequins dressed in fashionable looks created by three of the stylists represented in the show. Arielle Bobb-Willis and Daniel Obasi, who work both as stylists and photographers, and stylist Jermaine Daley have each produced a special look that highlights the important role stylists play in creating the narratives that audiences consume from fashion and photography.
Three museum staff collaborated on installing the exhibition in Cleveland: Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography, and fashion historians Darnell-Jamal Lisby, assistant curator, and Sarah Scaturro, Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator. The trio notes that “until recently, Black bodies and an authentic and diverse representation of Black experiences have mostly been excluded as inspirations for fashion magazine aesthetics and ad campaigns.” They delight in the way that “the photographs and films in The New Black Vanguard put Black bodies and experiences at the center of fashion images, as well as behind the camera, styling the images, and sometimes also designing the clothing. And the artists in the show challenge the dominance of Eurocentric definitions of beauty, expanding the canon to represent a dazzling variety of skin tones and body and hair types. As photographer Campbell Addy notes, ‘Fashion has always been a barometer for measuring privilege, power, class and freedom. To play with fashion is to play with one’s representation in the world.’”
The exhibition includes selections from groundbreaking contemporary photographers, including Tyler Mitchell, Awol Erizku, Micaiah Carter and Namsa Leuba, as well as a salon wall featuring works by 23 emerging Black photographers. A display of past and present publications contextualizes these images and charts the history of inclusion, and exclusion, in the creation of the Black commercial image, while simultaneously proposing a reenvisioned future.
