Passages, a travelling exhibition, just opened at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. The solo show features works from Whitfield Lovell who has dedicated his practice to a chapter of American history covering the period from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Movement. The photographs of anonymous African Americans collected over the years provide the medium from which he creates drawings with Conté crayons on salvaged wood or paper. At home and while travelling extensively from Europe to Africa and South America, Lovell was exposed to different artists and styles. Ultimately he chose to become a storyteller as illustrated throughout the exhibition which spans from his student years in the eighties until today. Displayed in a non chronological order on the lower level of the museum, the works include two major installations, series of drawings and assemblages.
Passage evokes loss and new beginning, change often accompanied by turmoil, and the entrance through a pair of black drapes is a theatrical introduction to Deep River and Flight from Deep River (2013), an immersive installation about a treacherous journey, the crossing of the Tennessee River to reach Camp Contraband, a Union Army site. In the dimly lit gallery, spotlights illuminate fifty-six portraits of African Americans drawn on wood drums of different sizes set around a mound of fresh dirt. Enthralled by the video of a murky river with shining ripples projected on the walls, the earthy and woody perfumes, the chirping of birds, it is easy to forget time and place and travel in the past. A slow walk around the installation allows to look at each portrait, sometimes full length. The tondi reveal the dignified expression and posture of the sitters with perfect hairdo wearing their Sunday best photographed for posterity, quiet presence in a scene staged by the artist. Gun, worn pair of shoes, kettle, trumpet, banjo,... a few of their belongings left on the tumulus, poignant remnants of their lives, add drama to the display. The everyday objects are now relics to remember thousands of enslaved people who crossed the river, symbol of their passage to freedom. The powerful installation leads to the portrait of a man on a voyage, standing tall above piles of worn leather suitcases, a proper transition to a sample of the Kin series, eight portraits out of sixty works on paper displayed next in a small gallery.
The object combined with each drawing contributes to the make up of a life's story: a model ship, a flask, a rifle target, flags,... and leave our imagination wander. The series made from 2008 to 2011 is followed in the next room by several "Tableaux" started earlier, in the 1990's. The mixture of installations, arrangements spilling on the floor, wall pieces, is visually challenging and confusing at first with nine works overcrowding the space. Still (1999) reveals the peaceful domestic life of a couple while two compositions stand out: America (2000) the full length portrait of a proud man with a bunch of American flags sticking out from his guts and You're My Thrill (2004) the drawing of a cool young man who could be the hero of a movie with his well trimmed mustache, slick hair, posing with a handgun behind a row of empty shell casings. In the same vein, Because I Wanna Fly (2021) seen further in the show features an ethereal woman with black birds circling around her like bad augurs. All reveal aspirations, dreams, human stories belonging to a past ghostly world. Five colored compositions made with oil sticks and charcoal on paper bring us back to an earlier surrealistic period of the artist. They are followed by more recent works like The Card Pieces (2018-2022) in which one portrait is matched with each playing card of a vintage deck. Who is the queen of heart? At first playful, the fifty-four works displayed in a monotonous alignment of black frames on the four walls become tedious. In contrast, the series of Reds (2021) made of relatively small size drawings on a background of red paper with a token found object, the prominent red sofa, the red chair and phone, in the next gallery painted black, allude to passion and drama. However the message remains ambiguous and the emotionless expression of the sitters does not reveal a clue.
Visitation: The Richmond Project is home. The immersive installation created in 2001 involved a thorough research by the artist in the local archives and refers to the struggles and ultimately successes of Jackson Ward, a thriving Black community now dispersed. A female voice reads the names of sixty-three of its prominent citizens as the visitor walks through an elaborate display about five chapters of the collective history: Battle Ground features a soldier in full uniform, Restoreth a matriarch and her healing potions, Our Best a group of fashionable gents and ladies, Coins wooden coins with portraits of locals, and Visitation: The Parlor a fully furnished living room with a musical component. The decor of the parlor recreated in its minute details with furniture and accessories of the late 19th-early 20th century, is an invitation to visit a couple's most inner sanctum and share a piece of the private life of two ghostly shadows drawn on the wooden walls. Their presence haunts the room lighted by a soft table lamp as a gospel fills the air.
Like a memorial, the comprehensive exhibition generates a state of reflection, and the respectful visitors whisper while going through the galleries. The quiet presence of the anonymous sitters is felt from start to end as we read their stories looking at their portraits and attributes while music and sounds heighten our emotions. The artist succeeds in his quest to make us "feel the spirit of the past".
photographs by the author:
"Flight from Deep River", 2013
"Because I Wanna Fly", 2021
"Our Best" (detail), 2001
"Deep River", 2013
