The Hawn Gallery presents:
R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation by Basil Kincaid
[If the map to freedom was etched on the inside of your forehead, would you carve back the skin and follow the route to your roots?]
On view October 28th – December 11th, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, October 28th from 6-8 p.m. at the Hawn Gallery, Hamon Arts Library
R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation by Basil Kincaid launches the Hamon Arts Library’s contemporary arts exhibition program for the Hawn Gallery and is curated by the first Curatorial Fellow for the Hawn Gallery, Georgia Erger. An Opening Reception will be held on Friday, October 28th from 6-8 p.m. wherein the artist, Basil Kincaid will present a performance art piece featuring collaborator, Audrey Simes and conduct a gallery talk.
Basil reclaims seemingly innocuous materials – fabrics, fibers, and even debris – and repurposes them into monumental textile works. For R3clamation: Routes & Roots, Basil fills the gallery with assemblage quilts, sculptures, and garments, comprised of the clutter we encounter daily in our urban communities. Intimately relevant to their place of cultivation, the works are imbued with the West African and American ancestral traditions that are steeped in the artist’s practice and etched in our community’s collective memory.
By no means static, these art works are worn by the artist during his performances and throughout the creative process. They become vessels for the black American body, representative of the trauma and subsequent healing the body has experienced. In looking at the works, whether in the installation, photographs, or videos, one is often unsure if an actual human form is draped beneath the garments and quilts, or if an actual human face is obscured by the masks. As such, the body is perpetually present, whether physically or symbolically, in form or in spirit.
Basil Kincaid is based in St. Louis, and studied studio art at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. His work has been exhibited nationally in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Boston, Brooklyn, and Chicago. In 2014, Basil completed an artist residency in Accra, Ghana with Arts Connect International, enabling him to expand The Reclamation Project globally. R3clamation: Routes & Roots is the third iteration of The Reclamation Project and the artist’s first exhibition in Dallas.
R3clamation: Routes & Roots will be on view throughout the fall semester and open during regular Hamon library hours: M-Th 8 a.m. – 12 a.m., F 8 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sat 12 – 5 p.m., Sun 1 p.m. – 12 a.m. The installation will extend beyond the Hawn Gallery, throughout the Hamon Arts Library and its exterior Meadows School of the Arts lobby, and will feature the artist’s recent photography and video work. For more information, please call 214-768-3813 or visit www.smu.edu/cul/hamon.
Thank you to Georgia Erger, Curatorial Fellow for the Hawn Gallery, for this post.
Images: courtesy of Basil Kincaid