‘What are we passing on?’: artists examine importance of inheritance
In a new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, the concept of inheritance and its many meanings is explored
By Veronica Esposito, Thu 29 Jun 2023
Some of what I’ve been thinking in my personal and professional life is, what are we passing on? Like, what are we giving to the next generation? What are we bringing to them, consciously or unconsciously? The future is unknown.”
The Whitney curator Rujeko Hockley shared these thoughts while telling me about her new group show at the museum, titled Inheritances. Running through February 2024, the show is a wide-ranging, multifaceted approach to the concept of inheritance and the many, many meanings it can hold.
Hockley’s exhibit grew, in part, out of two very demanding, avant-garde artworks made by Black creators. The first was Ephraim Asili’s widely acclaimed 2020 film The Inheritance, which will be screened as a part of the show. Set among a group of Black intellectuals living together in a house in West Philadelphia, The Inheritance mixes strands of political action,
Black history and culture, and lots of humor, while drawing inspiration from Jean- Luc Godard’s contributions to French New Wave cinema.
“Asili’s film is a combination of documentary and narrative,” said Hockley. “There’s a lot of archival material, a lot of historical referencing. It’s thinking a lot about the past, the kinds of events, histories, cultures within the African diaspora and how they might lead us to act in the present and the future.”
According to Hockley, the other major artistic inspiration for Inheritances was Lorraine O’Grady’s substantial piece, Rivers, First Draft, a 1982 performance piece in Central Park which now lives in Inheritances in the form of 48 photographs printed in 2015. Referred to by O’Grady as a “collagein- space” the piece seeks to synthesize the Caribbean and New England strands of her identity, while also blending different eras from her life: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. ( … )