scene of the day

Performance artist Kalup Linzy's hilarious yet thought-provoking rendition of All My Children

nationalisme reinvented

Inside what used to be the Miami-Dade County Drug Enforcement Agency warehouse, is a little-known gem- the Rubell Family Collection. Don and Merell Rubell, one of few black couples who have been collecting work for decades, have organized a landmark exhibition of contemporary art, entitled 30 Americans.

An interesting divergence from the Hewitt Collection exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, 30 Americans is reflective of an exciting moment occuring in contemporary art history, especially for an aspiring art historian like me. The premise of the show is quite simple. 31 artists. 31 differing artistic approaches to dealing with, or not dealing racial identity. All Americans...sort of.

If it sounds vaguely familiar to Thelma Golden and Christine Y. Kim's 2001 exhibition Freestyle, where a group of the most promising black artists were shown under the cleverly-coined but much contended, and even ambivalent term "post-black", well...it is, but it ain't. In fact, the curators considered Freestyle, along with other important contemporary exhibitions like Black Is, Black Ain't and Frequency.

The premise is loosely similar, but the artists, are quite different in that they represent an even newer group of cultural producers whose work is being made, hung, and discussed, simultaneously. Having trecked all the way to Brooklyn to Kehinde Wiley Studio and to SMH to see World Stage Africa, and having written about Wiley's work, in addition to Iona Rozeal Brown and Chicago's own Rashid Johnson, 30 Americans excites me because it calls for black visibility, or even, a form of visuality, bathed in red, white, and blue.

In other words, the show demands for the work to be considered as an American narrative of art history. With heavyhitters like Wiley, Rozeal Brown, Wangechi Mutu, Mark Bradford, William Pope L., and David Hammons, among many others, let me be clear in saying that 30 Americans in no way escapes the capitalizing academizing high-brow low-brow machine. Bank of America, Puma, and even Don and Mera Rubell themselves made sure of that. But I have to admit, I am now reconsidering my spring break plans for Paris, to make an unconventional art road trip to the M.I.A.