untitled

Over the past five decades, David Hammons has developed diverse complex, poignant, and humorous bodies of work encompassing sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and video. The chaotic orientation and mangled appearance of the various African masks and statuettes that comprise this hanging assemblage evoke the violent cultural fusion brought about by the capture, imprisonment, and forced transport of enslaved African men, women, and children from disparate ethnic backgrounds and regions during the Transatlantic trade (which lasted from the 1480s to the 1870s). As the haphazard arrangement obscures the ideal perception of each respective element, their cultural specificity must be disentangled. Proceeding from multiple legacies of assemblage art (including Black American vernacular sculptural traditions, Marcel Duchamp’s assisted readymades, and Italian Arte Povera), Untitled subverts conventional presentations of African sculpture, whether museological or decorative.