Passing Between the Lines

Shoshanna Weinberger presents a new body of work at Long Gallery from an ongoing series entitled Strangefruit. Works featured in Passing Between the Lines explore the multiple layers and meanings of the black and white stripe pattern. Stripes are often associated with animals, incarceration, fences, borders, flags and barcodes. The work signifies the displacement of marginalized bodies and the relentless ongoing social and political systems of abuse in this country. Employing coils of hair tied-up in gold links, Afros and some featuring lips, these muses are obscured from their identity creating a psychology of the familiar and ambiguous.

The word “passing” in the exhibition title is a direct reference to the literary legacy and anthology of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen. Larson’s fictional stories about women as “emotional nomads” navigating on impulse to shapeshift among society in order to survive or ‘pass’ between the lines of race is easily identifiable to the artist. These works reference Weinberger’s autobiographical history, one of a bi-racial identity that commonly falls on the periphery of cultural ambiguity. The work explores Weinberger’s experience with “invisible blackness”, “passing” and “Double- Consciousness”. As a result, the works are anonymous portraits that represent intersectional-identity, alienation and otherness.

3D Virtual Walkthrough

Artist on View

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Shoshanna Weinberger received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2003 and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. Living and working in Newark, NJ since 2006, Weinberger’s work is rooted in an exploration of her Caribbean-American heritage. It draws strongly on the complexity of heritage and assumed norms that reference the artist’s memories and our current xenophobic zeitgeist.

Weinberger’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous invitational group and solo exhibitions. She is a five-time participant of the Jamaica Biennial from 2006 to 2017 held in Kingston, Jamaica; and her work was included in the 2013 Martinique Biennale. A recipient of several awards, residencies, and grants that include: 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant; 2015 Joan Mitchell Center, Art-in-Residence, New Orleans; 2016 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts; 2017-2018 Project for Empty Space, Art-in-Residence, Newark, NJ; 2019 Dawn Scott Memorial Award, presented by the National Gallery of Jamaica and Edward M. Gomez; 2019-2020 McMillan Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art; and 2020 Sunroom Project Artist at Wavehill, Bronx, NY (opening May 2021 due to the pandemic). Invited back as the 2020-2021 McMillan Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art this fall. In addition to a solo exhibition at Long Gallery, in Harlem, NY, this September, Weinberger has a two-person exhibition entitled Body Language, at Nomad Gallery, in Brussels, Belgium.

Artist’s Statement

“My studio practice is rooted in an exploration of my Caribbean-American background. It draws strongly on the complexity of heritage and assumed norms that are referenced from memories, history, literature and our current xenophobic zeitgeist. I consider myself a visual anthropologist, cataloguing and surveying these experiences. 

Whether I was aware of it or not, "otherness" has been at the center of my consciousness. My early ideals of beauty were shaped by and linked through paintings throughout art history and photographs in fashion magazines. Those images were mythical, heroic, beautiful, powerful, and embodied a particular “Venus” that didn’t look like me, which influenced the way I viewed myself. It is this cultural history of female exposé, presentation, mutation, and myth that led me to investigate the way our identities have been imagined, invented and shaped through societal interpretations.

Works featured in Passing Between the Lines are a new body of work from two ongoing studio series entitled Strangefruit and Invisible Visibility. Through abstraction and pattern, Passing Between the Lines examines the concepts and experience of intersectionality, cultural ambiguity, “invisible blackness” and “Double-Consciousness”. Black and white stripe patterns are used throughout each work to evoke multiple layers and meanings.

Stripes are often associated with animals, incarceration, fences, trickery, borders, flags, barcodes and hybridity. The pattern is used as a barrier to signify the displacement of marginalized bodies and the relentless ongoing social and political systems of abuse in this country. Employing coils of hair tied-up in gold links, Afros and some featuring lips, these muses are obscured from their identity creating a psychology of the familiar and ambiguous.

The word “passing” in the exhibition title is a direct reference to the literary legacy and anthology of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen. Larson’s fictional stories entitled Passing and Quicksand are about women as “emotional nomads” navigating on impulse to shape-shift among society in order to survive or ‘pass’ between the lines of race is easily identifiable to me.

As a result, the works are anonymous portraits that represent intersectional-identity, alienation and otherness.” —Shoshanna Weinberger, 2020

Installation Images

Dates
September 17 through November 15, 2020

Location
Long Gallery Harlem
2073 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr Blvd.
New York, NY 10027

Artist
Shoshanna Weinberger