Archives are not an element of society that one generally regards as easily accessible by the public, for numerous reasons. Conservation and environmental issues, geographical issues, and financial burden of maintaining and keeping archives keeps them generally housed in universities, major museums, etcetera.
It is a commonly known fact that only a small fraction of the cultural material owned by museums is actually on view. The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, arguably two of the main powerhouse museums in the country, regularly conduct re-hangings of their collections, swapping out works and objects as they tweak their curatorial narratives, which we have seen much of in recent years in an attempt to ‘decolonize’ the museum. However, archival objects and collections rarely see the light of day, outside of scholars, researchers, and students. And yet, there is a will to archive, a desire for us as cultures to retain material and store it for future generations. Who is it all for, if only the few select individuals from specific veins of academia have access to it? In his seminal essay, “Archive Fever,” Jacques Derrida describes the status of the keepers of the archive, the ‘archons,’ as having complete power over the interpretation of the archives. This act of interpretation is where I find myself in conflict; as a young student of art history and museums, I find myself at a crossroads of purpose for the archive. Is it enough to open up the museum? Or must we also open up our archives? What can be gained when we allow an opening up of the archive to nontraditional modes of interpretation, conversation, and connection? The Plural of He at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art begins to answer that question.
At the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art this spring is a small exhibition occupying the front foyer and a gallery room off to the side of the entrance desk. A light shade of green gives the room a warm, inviting feeling. In a small frame by the front door hangs a photograph of Colin Robinson, a Trinidadian-American critic, poet, and activist of social and sexual liberation. His archive, recently acquired after his passing in 2021, was used as an exploration ground for five artists in residence over the course of 18 months. The result was the small show The Plural of He, which included five commissioned works and two priorly existing works alongside a few objects from the archive and a series of poetic statements from people who knew Robinson during his life.
While the show is quite small in square footage, the depth of exploration is immediately apparent. Each artists’ individual response to “records of Robinson’s personal history, from carnival costumes and calypso music to love letters and agitprop,” as described by the museum’s exhibition description. However, I found that the use of text in the exhibition epitomized the attitude of the exhibition; the complete lack of interpretive text allows the viewer to focus on the interpretations of the artists in a direct act of cross-spatio-temporal relationship building. Ada Patterson’s work “a piece of you no one else will have” (2023) consists of small postcard-like drawings of hands, shapes, and objects. The images are intimate and delicate, often focusing on little details. The title, taken from a line from one of Robinsons’ poems, speaks to a yearning desire for connection, a desire to be truly, deeply, and intimately known. Alongside the work is a text written by the curator and executor of Robinson’s estate, describing the materials the work is in conversation with: “Of the many, many treasures unearthed from Colin’s archives, the ones that touch me most bear the weight of love: a mixtape he made for his beloved Kodjoe; letters to ones that could have been but were decidedly not; and, most achingly, dozens of unwritten ‘dear sweetheart’ cards he collected over decades to gift to a lover that did not come.” While a heartbreaking thought, the layers of exchange present in the work in a way enacts the desire for connection: Robinson, somewhere in the past is reaching out, and we, through Patterson, are reaching back, almost but not quite touching.
A mixed media and installation work by Devan Shimoyama titled “Porkys was loud” is based on an unfinished novella by Robinson, titled “Take Me, Take Me”. A large canvas depicts a colorful Black man laying on a kitchen floor part painted, part drawn, and part appliqued. A green sequined ficus sits in the corner of the canvas. The installation takes us into the environment of a kitchen, complete with a small table and chairs and white tiles with hot pink grout. On the table sits a hard copy of the unfinished novella. The overall aesthetic creation is something vaguely nightmarish and fabulous, transporting viewers into the creative mind of Robinson at the time of his writing the novella as a fresh Yale-dropout who recently joined a group of Black queer writers. The translation of Robinson’s own personification through the novella and then the eyes of Shimoyama communicated the vigor of a young activist still grappling with an exploration of his own identity in an energetic yet empathetic manner.
In The Plural of He, artists were given access to an immersive experience of exploring the many facets of a widely unknown figure who was considered a pivotal leader in a minority community, allowing for them to act as translators and thus create similarly immersive experiences for themselves and the visitors of the exhibition. Rather than simply having a curator go through and pick pieces of the archive to share, the letting in of artists into the archive allowed for a far more creative mode of communication, cross-culturally and cross-temporally, in what I can best describe as an experiment in what Jose Munoz called a queer utopia. One can only imagine the creative possibilities when we allow members of communities often overlooked into archives of figures of the past; perhaps this practice can be used as a bridge, allowing for us to build our collective histories together, between the past and present, in conversation.
The Plural of He is on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York, NY until July 21, 2024. With commissions by Llanor Alleyne, Leasho Johnson, Ada M. Patterson, Devan Shimoyama, and Natalie Wood, and additional works by Richard Fung and amber williams-king. Curated by Andil Gosine.
[Image: Devan Shimoyama, "Porky was loud," 2023. Oil, colored pencil, acrylic, collage, sequins, glitter, tiles, fabric and jewelry on canvas stretched over panel, 84 x 68 in. © Devan Shimoyama]