Jan 11th 2019

Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black

@ The Art Institute of Chicago

111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603

Opening Friday, January 11th, from 6PM - 7PM

On view through Sunday, April 14th

Esteemed photographer Dawoud Bey discusses his new series “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” depicting sites in and around Cleveland associated with the Underground Railroad. His photographs are “a reimagining of the past made in the contemporary moment, an invoking of the historic as it exists in the present.”

Rubloff Auditorium
Free; registration required
REGISTER—http://bit.ly/2PiWzC1

About the exhibition:

“Night Coming Tenderly, Black” is the first museum showing of the series by Dawoud Bey (American, born 1953), in which the veteran portraitist turns from living people to ghosts and their pathways. According to Bey’s artist statement from the 2018 FRONT International Triennial, where the series was first shown,

The Underground Railroad is as much myth as it is reality. Its effectiveness was premised on both the secret movements of slaves escaping to freedom and various “stations,” which temporarily hid them before they could make their final passage to freedom. Moving about with the assistance of various anonymous sympathetic individuals, or “conductors,” their movements often took place under cover of darkness. The challenge for me with this project is to make this history, which has always been unseen, somehow tangible, and to visualize that landscape in a way that resonates in this contemporary moment.

Persons with disabilities who would like to request an accessibility accommodation for an Art Institute program are encouraged to send an e-mail to access@artic.edu two weeks in advance of the program.

Image: Dawoud Bey. Photo by Jason Madsen.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: , , , ,