Sondra Perry, you out here look n like you don't belong to nobody: heavy metal and reflective, 2019. © Sondra Perry. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Ruby City is pleased to be one of five exhibiting partners hosting the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon, organized by curators and artistic directors Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza. The curators broadened the scope of the project to include not only artists living and working in Texas but also “Texpats,” artists with deep personal and cultural connections to the Lone Star State working in any part of the world. For the first time in the history of the project, the Biennial includes international artists for whom Texas and its history are subject matter.
Jamal Cyrus, Sargassum, 2019. © Jamal Cyrus, courtesy of Inman Gallery. Photo by Ansen Seale.
A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon is the product of radical transformations in collective action and awareness catalyzed by the global pandemic and worldwide demonstrations in defense of Black, transgender and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) lives. The five-venue Biennial, encompassing the work of 51 artists, educators, activists and practitioners, serves as an iterative and artist-driven source of agency and collective potential.
Installation view of the 2021 Texas Biennial at Ruby City. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Histories are contained within objects. The artists presented at Studio at Ruby City each explore and acknowledge various material, social and political histories through the use of found or discarded objects, personal items and organic materials. In so doing, they establish new parameters for understanding history, ourselves and each other. Sculptural works by Melvin Edwards, Ann Johnson and Sondra Perry probe the American history of chattel slavery and Jamal Cyrus explores the triangular, transatlantic trade of arms, goods and human cargo. Ariel René Jackson’s site-specific installation examines the history of racial segregation of schools and a suspended installation by Mich Stevenson alludes to the dangerous history of hooded Ku Klux Klan figures. As a whole this exhibition presents new ways of seeing and interrogating the past and serves as a means of investigating and creating a new future.
Mich Stevenson, Yellowjacket No.3, 2021. © Mich Stevenson. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Melvin Edwards, New Cult, 2007. © Melvin Edwards, courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Melvin Edwards, Nite Work, 2012. © Melvin Edwards, courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Ann Johnson, CONCUBINE, 2020. © Ann Johnson. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Ann Johnson, FERTILITY, 2019. © Ann Johnson. Photo by Ansen Seale.
Ariel René Jackson, The Next Life of Property, 2019. © Ariel René Jackson. Photo by Ansen Seale.