NEW YORK, NY.- “I’d always wanted a pair of cowboy boots, they’re such an American staple,” Antwaun Sargent said in a phone interview.

The Western look may or may not be on the cusp of a comeback, but for Sargent, that rough-and-ready wrangler style never lost its charm. He once set his sights on a metal-tipped pair that he spotted on a New York City fashion runway. “I had no idea what I would wear them with,” he said, “but I knew I had to have them.”

Sargent, a writer, curator and director at Gagosian galleries, has hung on to those boots and, with them, an enduring fascination with cowboy lore and gear. “For me, it has always been about exploring how we deal with those symbols in our culture and a way of expanding our notion of what they represent.”

And now he has a vehicle. As curator of “Helmut Lang Seen by Antwaun Sargent,” he will oversee a collaboration between the 37-year-old fashion label and a diverse group of artists. His installation, “Cowboy,” set to open Saturday at the Hannah Traore Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was conceived, he said, to flip any stale or conventional notion of the American West on its head.

He was intent on correcting long-held assumptions. “Most people don’t know that many cowboys were Black,” he said. “We want to uncover that history.”

He was no less enthralled with the look. “So much of cowboy culture has become fashion culture,” Sargent said. “I was interested in the ubiquity of that, and in the ways that pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift use the trope of the cowboy to talk about freedom, power and community.”




The show, which runs through Feb. 23, takes as its point of departure a white cotton T-shirt from the 2004 Helmut Lang fall collection. That minimalist item, with the word “cowboy” printed on its inside in reverse, serves as the somewhat ambiguous inspiration for the label’s fall show at the gallery as well as the work of seven artists — painters, sculptors, photographers and sound artists — each invited by Sargent to place a distinctive stamp on the Western genre. One of the show’s more haunting images, by Awol Erizku, a Los Angeles photographer, is that of a blinkered white horse standing behind a flower-covered chain-link fence in a suburban front yard.

In the exhibition zine, artist Quay Quinn Wolf, whose works are made from leather and metal, explained: “When thinking about the word ‘cowboy,’ I think about the strain on the body. I think about the sweat, the grime and the oil imprinted on the saddle. I think of patina.”

Daniel Obasi, a Nigerian photographer, will show several images of a young man draped in filmy white cloth, cavorting with a pale mare on the beach. “Those scenes represent memory, nostalgia,” Obasi wrote.

The exhibition is but the latest in a string of collaborations between the fashion label, owned by Japanese Fast Retailing Co., and artists who in the past have included Martine Syms, Shayne Oliver and Carrie Mae Weems and works from the archive of Peter Hujar, their imagery printed on a selection of T-shirts, blankets, posters and the commercial like.

Traore, the Canadian-Malinese gallery owner, was inspired, she said, by a 2018 exhibition highlighting Afro American cowboys by Algerian photographer Mohamed Bourouissa at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Elements of the Western ethos have been captured by other designers including Tom Ford, who paraded rhinestone cowboys inspired by “Elvis,” the Oscar-nominated film directed by Baz Luhrmann, on his runway last fall, and by popular labels including Miron Crosby, a Dallas brand whose luxury boots embellished with fancy scrollwork and flame designs are made in West Texas and Mexico. Neon Cowboys, a creation of designer and entrepreneur Asia Hall, is another brand whose light-up boots, Stetsons and fringed button-up shirts are the brash insignia of Doja Cat, Beyoncé and Kesha.

Sargent’s installation is yet another boost to this newly inclusive vision of the cowboy. And an indication, he said, that our long-standing obsession with the American West has yet to peak.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.