The Voices of the Artists #4: Around the Portraits of Frederick Douglass
Tony Cokes | Alfredo Jaar | Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi | Zózimo Bulbul
34th São Paulo Biennial | Online
May 13, 2021
The series The Voices of the Artists is part of a special program that the São Paulo Biennial Foundation has prepared to develop, deepen, and expand the debates central to the 34th São Paulo Biennial, Though it's dark, still I sing.
The fourth meeting discussed Frederick Douglass's portraits (USA, 1818–1895) in today's current context. At the event, researcher Janaina Damaceno Gomes introduced the importance of the figure of Douglass, a public man, journalist, writer, speaker, and one of the main leaders of the abolitionist movement in the United States. Considered the most photographed American of the 19th century, Douglass was the son of an enslaved black woman and a white man he did not know. As a result of his quest to spread a positive and non-stereotyped image of black people, his portraits entered the circulation of newspapers, as well as in private spaces across the country. Today, they circulate the world as a symbol of justice and resistance.
To watch a recording of the talk, please click here.
Above: Tony Cokes, Installation View: Tony Cokes: Music, Text, Politics, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, October 23, 2020–March 7, 2021. Courtesy the artist; Greene Naftali, New York; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles; and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.