‘Reckoning’
Vanessa German’s grief over Black deaths reaches The Frick
Three golden altarpieces are given their own slice of the museum. The altars in honor of Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are adorned with colorful flowers, birds of every kind and rising Black figures, all undergirded by cascades of glass bottles in striking blue. The pieces are on a stage of Astroturf with a background of a blue sky while music plays.
“nothing can separate you from the language you cry in” is the first piece in the installation “Reckoning: Grief and Light,” part of artist Vanessa German’s new residency at The Frick Pittsburgh-in Point Breeze.
The multidimensional work explores the museum as a public space to grieve and to find stillness and healing through art in service of “radical empathy,” she says. The work will be on view through early 2022, according to Dawn Reid Bream,
The Frick’s associate curator of decorative arts.
The residency, which was announced in March, was a natural collaboration, Bream said. German was interested in working with The Frick specifically, realizing it was little more than a mile away from her Homewood studio. Meanwhile, Elizabeth E. Barker, the Frick’s executive director, was seriously considering contacting German about a partnership. The multiyear residency gives her full freedom to explore her art within the space. “Reckoning: Grief and Light” marks her first solo showing at a Pittsburgh museum.
“We are not here to be a static collection of what art was and tell you what art should be,” Bream said. “Museums are about building connections and using our collections to work with contemporary artists to bring new stories, new perspectives, to build on our collection. I think this is vital work that we’re doing.”
The artwork “nothing can separate”
features a repeated recording of the first and third movements from a symphonic work, “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice,” written by Emmy-winning composer Jonathan Wineglass and based on libretto from Carnegie Mellon University history professor Edda Fields-Black. Interspersed within the recording, German counts the 8 minutes, 46 seconds initially reported as how long Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.
German said she has been making memorial pieces her entire life, beginning when she grew up surrounded by the AIDS epidemic in Los Angeles in the 1980s and ’90s. Her artistic practice has reflected her desire to memorialize marginalized people multidimensionally and explore themes of love, Black bodies, queerness, community and power.
“nothing can separate” was installed amid the Italian Renaissance relief paintings of The Frick’s Italian Gallery, and Bream noted “the conversation is happening” between depictions of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus from the 14th and 15th centuries and the 21st-century “martyrs and saint-like figures” of the new installation.
A few museumgoers gasped when the artistic vision took shape and dozens of glass bottles were wired to the steps of the altars, Bream recalled. Every element has multiple meanings, according to the artist.The eagle, a symbol of American liberty, on the Elijah McClain altar is missing his ribbon saying “E Pluribus Unum.” The alarm clock, showing 12:05, emphasizes “it is past time” to resolve the structural issues central to the three Black figures’ deaths. It also signifies that many of the high-profile killings of Black people involving police occurred at night.
McClain, 23, whose death as the result of being restrained by a chokehold and being injected with ketamine in Aurora, Colo., in August 2019 received expanded attention following Floyd’s death, played classical music on the violin. Busts of famous white
composers in the piece are reminders of cultural barriers Black musicians have faced as well as the music McClain can no longer play. The busts were symbolically placed beneath the figure of McClain, raising him up.
Blue candles adorn the altar of Taylor, who died in Louisville, Ky., after being shot in her apartment during a botched police raid. The bottles evoke the Gullah-Geechee tradition of hanging bottles on tree branches to ward off evil spirits or the act of placing a bottle on a grave to cleanse the soulas it departs.
“My work always has riddles and secrets and magic spells,” German said. “I’m operating in these dimensions. I’m using symbols in the strata of past, present, future, political, cultural, spiritual, and sort of seeing what illuminates through these intersections.”
Both German and Bream brought up the museum’s founder, Helen Clay Frick, and her strong views on what art is and what works are worthy of a gallery.
“[I’ve been] thinking about ... the museum being in service of undermining and undoing the structures and the violent strategies of racism and white supremacy even in the midst of a space where one of the docents, when they found out I was showing in there, said, ‘What would Helen think?’” German said.
Bream said the altarpieces bring up important institutional questions of inclusivity with which The Frick continues to grapple. German’s residency was announced on the heels of a major exhibition, “The Frick Reflects: Looking Back, Moving Forward,” which examined the rarefied milieu and legacy of the institution’s founding family.
The museum is also revamping the tour of the Frick family’s historic mansion, Clayton, to add context about the domestic staff and how such luxurious living was not common in 1890s Pittsburgh.
“How can we be a place where everyone feels welcome while acknowledging in this museum [that] a lot of people have not felt this place is for them or that this museum reflects their lived experience?” Bream said. “I think we want this to be a space where everyone feels welcomed here: They are valued, they are respected. Vanessa is an amazing, authentic ambassador in our effort to do that.”
Programming related to the installation will continue. On April 22, the museum will screen “The Language You Cry In,” a film that inspired the title of German’s work and depicts the search for meaningful links between African Americans and their ancestral past. German will host a conversation with Fields-Black on April 29 and perform original poetry on May 13. All programs begin at 7 p.m. and are streamed online for free at TheFrickPittsburgh.org. Registration is required.
The altarpieces represent the grief aspect of “Reckoning: Grief and Light.” A connected work, “Light,” will take the form of a 17-foot neon sign at German’s house in Homewood. The sign will read “What is the opposite of a lynching?” and is intended to provoke dialogue on how to lift up people of color.
The artist also plans to organize another “Blue Walk.” Her most recent walk was held to mark the 100th anniversary of the Omaha race riot of 1919. Led by German, participants clad in cobalt blue perform a series of ritual moments of celebration and mourning, with crying, laughing and dancing. It is open to the community and will take place from 6-7 p.m. May 27. Participants will meet at the corner of Hamiltonand Brushton avenues.
German intends to lead the group from the neon sign to The Frick’s front steps, traveling past the historically and wealth-divided border between Homewood and Point Breeze, exemplified by the Frick mansion, which is currently closed for renovations. Participants will wear wireless speakers playing “Requiem for Rice.”
“It’s this way of being in an intentional healing relationship with the earth and with community members,” German said. “A lot of times, I think people think it looks like a performance. But it’s a very serious thing for the artist and the community members to participate in. You can’t halfway do the Blue Walk. It’s really intense and emotional. It is a work of social healing that ismy invention.”
The artist plans additions to “nothing can separate.” She’ll add lavender flowers for transpeople and more bottles, enough to cover the Astroturf on the floor. She said the museum’s willingness to commit to her vision is “an act of institutional courage.” As an example, German noted that she wanted to be topless in a photo shoot with the artwork.
What would Helen say? No one knows, but museum officials said OK.
“It’s such a gift to see the work up and it’s alive and it’s at an institution that is committed to it being alive and allowing the experience and the adventure,” German said. “It really is an adventure, going to a place that they haven’t gone to before. They’re supporting that vision of radical empathy. They’re being who theysay they are.”