Danny Tisdale Installation And Performance In The ‘Radical Presence’ Survey Show

Visual artist and Harlem World Magazine founder Danny Tisdale is currently showing and will perform in January 2013 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston as part of the Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, the first comprehensive survey of performance art by black artists working from the perspective of the visual arts. Radical Presence provides a critical framework to discuss the history of black performance traditions within the visual arts beginning with the “happenings” of the early 1960s, to the 21st century.

Including Mr. Tisdale’s work and a performance, the exhibition will feature work by three generations of artists including Terry Adkins, Papo Colo, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Theaster Gates, Sherman Fleming, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Maren Hassinger, Wayne Hodge, Satch Hoyt, Shaun El C. Leonardo, Kalup Linzy, Dave McKenzie, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Clifford Owens, Tameka Norris, Benjamin Patterson, Adrian Piper, William Pope.L, Rammellzee, Sur Rodney (Sur), Dread Scott, Xaviera Simmons, Hennessy Youngman, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others.

The history of performance art as a manifestation of radical shifts in social thought and artistic practice is well documented in publications like Performance: Live Art Since 1960 (1998) by Roselee Goldberg, and her seminal book from 1979, Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present. Performance art practices in Latin America were also eloquently documented in the 2008 exhibition Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960-2000 at El Museo del Barrio, New York. Ironically, given the rich history of performance and its prevalence in black artistic practices since the 1960s, this tradition has largely gone unexamined save for a handful of publications including the exhibition catalogue Art as a Verb (1988) by Leslie King Hammond and Lowery Stokes Sims and curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Senior Curator at CAMH.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art reflects the breadth and scope of performance art practice over the last 50+ years. The publication includes an essay by exhibition curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, as well as contributions by Franklin Sirmans, Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Naomi Beckwith, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yona Backer, Founding Partner, Third Streaming, New York; Tavia Nyong’o, Associate Professor of Performance Studies, New York University; and photographer/performance artist Clifford Owens.

Get a copy here.

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