Victoria Miro is delighted to participate in Frieze Viewing Room with a single-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s acclaimed Lessons of the Hour and new and important works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Yayoi Kusama, Doron Langberg, Wangechi Mutu and Do Ho Suh.
Featuring film, painting, photography, and sculpture, the gallery’s presentation is an expansive consideration of Frieze’s invitation to respond to the mission of the Vision & Justice Project. The Vision & Justice Project takes as its conceptual inspiration the prescient thinking of Frederick Douglass, in particular his speech Pictures and Progress, also known as Lecture on Pictures, in which Douglass addressed the transformative power of pictures to create a new vision for the nation. The Vision & Justice Project wrestles with urgent questions around the ways in which narratives created by culture have both limited and liberated a definition of national belonging in America today. It argues that an examination of image-making is vital for society’s collective consciousness and self-comprehension.
For its viewing room, the gallery is presenting works by artists who are first-generation Americans, or are based in, or who have spent a significant amount of time in, the US. At a time when immigration has been politicised to unprecedented levels, it celebrates that the majority of gallery artists who work in America are of global origins, enriching the cultural landscape and what it might mean to ‘be’ American.
It includes a single-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour (excerpt above), a poetic meditation on the life and times of Frederick Douglass, which, reflecting on issues of social justice that shaped Douglass’ life’s work, is informed by some of Douglass’ most important speeches, including Lecture on Pictures. Also on view are new and recent paintings by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, María Berrío and Doron Langberg, drawing by Do Ho Suh, sculpture by Wangechi Mutu, and works by Yayoi Kusama including a soft sculpture created during the artist’s extended period of living and working in New York from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.In a special viewing room as part of the Vision & Justice Tribute at Frieze New York, honouring the exemplary work of the Project and its founder Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, the gallery will present a photographic artwork from Julien’s Lessons of the Hour.
