Illingworth Kerr Gallery, October 9 - December 12, 2009

Glenn Ligon
Death of Tom
2008
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

Exhibited at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Death of Tom had a distinctly different feel than the MOCCA version I saw in 2008. Dominating the entrance of the IKG space stood an enormous black box clad in tar paper, with an elusive, melancholy piano tune emanating from its innards. Through heavy black curtains one entered the box, encountering the dim, spare interior. The floor was carpeted with soft, dark pile. The walls were painted black plywood, the ceiling a drooping shadowy fabric. This temporary cinema/shack formed the container for a single-channel projected video (transferred from 16mm to DVD) scored by acclaimed pianist Jason Moran. The video consists of the remaining visual signature of a film (shot previously by Ligon) that intended to recreate a scene from an early twentieth century 'Tom Show' film by Edwin S. Porter. A 'Tom Show', for those who are unaware, was a form of popular stage play performed in the United States from the 1850's to the early 1900's based on the book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Importantly, 'Tom Shows' were performed by white actors who played African-American characters while wearing blackface makeup.

For Ligon, the 'Tom Show' clearly presented an opportunity to interrogate and potentially reclaim racist representations of African-American culture. But by chance, the results of Ligon's re-creation were almost entirely lost in the development process. Thankfully, rather than scrap the film, Ligon saw an opportunity to expand the connotative possibilities of the project by presenting the film in its inchoate state. In Death of Tom this failure of representation suggests that the film itself is trying to come to grips with it's own controversial past, tentative and reluctant to coalesce into distinguishable forms. The result was a complex and mesmerizing installation. Where once a re-created scene of a racial insensitivity appeared, now only remained a subtle palimpsest. At times the distorted suggestion of a human body entered the frame, or the title sequence emerged from a cloud of grey. The piano melody waltzed and drifted, seeming to seduce and mourn the celluloid fog of almost-becoming or approaching rigor mortis. The audience became witnesses and voyeurs to this non-spectacle, straining to see through the mists, while collected together as an arbitrary community within the black box.

Glenn Ligon
Death of Tom
2008
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

Standing in stark contrast to the black, laconic box of Death of Tom was Ligon's equally ambitious and ambiguous installation Untitled (Minnesota Massacre). Sealing off the back of the gallery, a tall white edifice blocked all hope of entrance. The only access point above this bulwark was a stairway leading to a small platform on which audience members could stand and view into the rest of the work. Within the off-limits space (that suggested observation platforms, anatomy theatres, pioneer forts, and other panoptic systems) were found a selection of paintings from the collection of the Glenbow Museum arranged on portable carts. These large, crudely painted panels depict all manner of horrific atrocity supposedly perpetrated by 'Indians' upon settlers. The paintings, formerly part of an early moving picture show, were created in response to an uprising by Sioux in southern Minnesota in the mid-1800's. Functioning as fetish and propaganda, the panels were once used to stir outrage against first nations people. Nowadays, the panels are kept in storage at the Glenbow, due to their potential to stir up different forms of outrage.

Glenn Ligon
Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)
2009
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

In Ligon's installation the contentious paintings were removed from direct view and sorted unceremoniously, suggesting objectivity and simultaneous inaccessibility. What was to be made of this separation? Oddly, by removing our ability to access the contested works, Ligon increased their visibility, drawing them into the field of our experience through a peripheral point of view. In so doing, the artist created a transitional space within the IKG, in which the paintings resided between institutional storage and public display. Through this presentation Ligon invested the works with the context of both scenarios, while raising questions that could not be posed in either an archive or traditional exhibit.

Glenn Ligon
Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)
2009
Photo: M.N. Hutchinson, Courtesy Illingworth Kerr Gallery

With both Death of Tom and Untitled (Minnesota Massacre) Ligon created a paradoxical reminder that the past is perpetually retained even if it is obscured from view; at times arising from ether to articulate the screen of our repressions, at others arriving at our gates as criminal and victim, colonizer and refugee. Each installation produced reflections on the act of looking itself, and how this activity is both perceptual and socially constructed; inscribed within multifarious contexts, hierarchies, and discourses. Above all, the works carved spaces within them that defied appearance, preventing direct access to their content, while drawing attention to the armatures that support and condition our attempts to rationalize history through specific narrative forms. If a critical position is to be gleaned from the works, it is perhaps that systems which produce and historicize representations for public consumption (be they cinema, theatre, visual art, museums, or art galleries) are never simply what they appear to be. In this way Ligon suggests that If we are to look at these systems honestly, we must investigate the invisible spaces and histories that they sequester from view, and express these non-sites through the very limitations of sight itself.