Alanna Fields | Audacity

×

Expand

Alanna Fields, "Ain't Studdin' You," 2020

Courtesy of the Gallery.

In gallery one, is a new work by the renowned Toronto-based, Trinidadian artist, writer, and educator, Michèle Pearson Clarke (b. 1973). And in our second gallery, the burgeoning American artist and educator, Alanna Fields (b. 1990) will be presenting a suite of recent works culminating in her first exhibit in the country. This is also the first time both artists are being brought into proximity in an exhibition context. Among the variable concerns they take up, at their root, both artists’ works are invariably engaged in black and queer subjectivities through expanded photo-adjacent practices. This intergenerational pair approaches photographic explorations from a historical outlook (Fields) as well as queer expression in contemporary life today (Clarke). Clarke, who is a seasoned photo artist and filmmaker, has expanded her repertoire within the medium over the years, and this exhibition takes that further. For the first time, Clarke’s work has spatially transformed the exhibition space with objects, painted walls, and a built architectural apparatus for an enveloping four-channel video. As with her ongoing commitment to creating an encouraging space for grief, vulnerability, and the attendant unease, this new exhibition titled Quantum Choir, makes such states of vulnerability not only possible but welcomed in a tender collective embrace. The artist brings together a choir of four including herself–all masculine presenting women–to confront their fears, ingrained shame, and insecurity around their singing voice. Through their solidarity, they uphold a padded landing for each other’s vulnerability. 

Fields on the other hand is a student of queer history. She enlivens intimate traces of Black queer lives from found vernacular photographs predominately taken between the 60s and 90s. Through her dignifying attention, she awakens a different consciousness of a past often narrowly narrated by the burdens of societal marginalization, stigmatization, and hard-fought battles for equal rights. Under the title, Audacity, Fields’ exhibition focuses on body language, gestures, and sartorial elegance that characterizes the Black queer lives who transcended the recessive demands of heteronormative hegemony. Fields’ photographs are illustrative, painterly and tactile. On their surfaces, the artist delicately layers with wax, glitter, and colour bands, affording the found photographs—the spirited lives and histories they testify—an activated life in the present. 

Clarke and Fields’ work is grounded in a sustained archival practice. While Fields tasks herself with extensive searches into the past, Clarke accumulates hers as a result of living into the future. Fields finds queer affinity and kinship through her inquiries in reversed time. And Clarke shows us the fruits of leaning on that very kinship as she moves through the world. Together, they emphasize archival practice as a social necessity, keeping alive an ever-unfolding intricate tapestry of queer history across generations. 

Alanna Fields’ work has been exhibited at The High Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, MoCADA, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Baxter St. CCNY, Expo Chicago, Felix Art Fair in LA, and UNTITLED Art Fair in Miami. Fields is a Gordon Parks Foundation Scholar and has participated in residencies at Silver Arts Projects, Light Work, Baxter St. CCNY, and Gallery Aferro. She received her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute and is a Lecturer of Photography at Howard University. Fields has given artist talks at the Aperture Foundation, Light Work, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Parson’s New School, Syracuse University, and Stanford University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Aperture Magazine, FOAM Magazine, and The Atlantic amongst others. Fields lives and works between Washington, D.C., and New York City.