Of all the retrospectives dedicated to Nari Ward's work to date, the exhibition in the Navate space of Pirelli HangarBicocca (from 28 March to 28 July 2024) has something new and different to offer. As pointed out by Roberta Tenconi – who curated it with Lucia Aspesi – Ground Break has an unprecedented structure that revolves around the notion of collaboration and performativity, enhancing the idea of transformation and exchange that has always been central to the artist's work. At the heart of the exhibition is the refashioning of a series of works conceived for a choreography by Ralph Lemon (to be featured in a major retrospective at MoMA P.S.1 in New York this autumn). “Thanks to the possibilities offered by our space,” Tenconi explains, “we have managed to reconstruct and present again in a museum context the installations that Ward created for Geography Trilogy, a project by Ralph Lemon that lasted almost ten years, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, the result of research into different bodies, geographies and dance traditions.” Lemon invited Ward to create the sets, props and stage elements that the dancers would use. “We were not really interested in reproducing that situation exactly because this is a different context: there is no audience sitting in a theatre and the interaction takes place in a different way. Responding to the specific nature of the place and the circumstance, and with the same trust he received at the time, Ward decided to invite another artist to animate the installation after which the exhibition is named, in this case through the use of sound, the reading of texts and movements. “Trust”, the curator emphasises, “is a central word in the exhibition project and one that Ward often uses.”
The artist he chose was Justin Randolph Thompson, who proposes to create a series of sound performances on a total of 18 dates, inviting in turn other musicians and activists, playing on instruments inspired by and in dialogue with the materials of Ward's sculptures and installations in the exhibition. The performances take place literally on top of the work Ground Break, 2024, (a play on words), the large floor installation consisting of over 4,000 concrete bricks covered with copper plates, on which a series of sculptures from another collaboration between Ward and Ralph Lemon (Parallel Objects, 2012) are also displayed. A recurring element in these works – which originate from various familiar objects, such as a wheelbarrow, a deckchair, part of a freezer and a kettle – is the silver and sometimes golden fabric, woven and knotted around the units. Known for its thermal properties, this material can be used both to wrap and shelter plants from the cold and to produce emergency blankets, conveying a desire for care, protection and growth. The installations American Bottle Anthem Booth and Italian Bottle Anthem Booth, 2024, specially created for this exhibition, were made from existing objects, in this case two telephone booths, filled with glass bottles and mattress springs, inside which you can hear, respectively, the American and Italian national anthems, played on an instrument made up of glass bottles filled with water, an element that recurs throughout the exhibition.
Nari Ward was born in Jamaica and moved to the United States at the age of 12. For him, the reuse of objects does not so much reflect ecological concerns but rather an almost archaeological interest in the layers of historical and political references within them. His work is the expression of a strong critique of consumerism, the concept of social justice, and also has a more symbolic and spiritual aspect linked to his Caribbean origin and the tradition there that inanimate elements have the power to activate energy, and create spaces of sharing and connection. Ward trained in the late nineteenth eighties in Harlem, a central place in his upbringing and where he still lives today. He created his first works at a time of social and economic crisis, the AIDS epidemic and the spread of crack cocaine. “A time, he says, of trauma”, explains the curator. “From that trauma, he tried through his art to find moments of redemption, to propose another narrative and give space to aspects that nobody wanted to see.” Pushchairs, for example, are among his most emblematic objects. Abandoned products that were used twice, first to transport children and, after being salvaged by a number of people, mainly the homeless, used as shopping trolleys or, in this case, to move their few possessions, collected waste and empty bottles.
The idea of layering, interweaving and memory are central to the cult exhibition he created in 1996 together with Janine Antoni and Marcel Odenbach in a former fire station in Harlem. There, Ward collected and reassembled all the objects he found in the building, which had also been the headquarters of a company that transported pianos (so there were strings, keys, and piano parts), a limousine service (so car parts and once the family home of one of the drivers, therefore also private articles). Ward takes all these objects, suspends them and ties them together in a large mesh that becomes a work in progress, growing and changing: indeed, the structure is always installed in relation to a specific site (so that it can be transformed and grow in size), incorporating new elements from the site itself. Now installed at the entrance to the exhibition, Hunger Cradle instils in the visitor a sense of envelopment and protection, emphasised by the term “cradle” in the title, while “hunger” reflects its ability to always encompass new additions.
Apollo/Poll, from 2017, the only work in the exhibition that is visible from outside Pirelli HangarBicocca, also evokes Harlem, and it would be a shame not to see it cast its reddish light again, especially at night. “It is a reproduction of the sign of a legendary theatre,” says Tenconi, “the Apollo, where the greatest African-American musicians performed, a place where black identity and culture were created. Converted into a cinema in 1975, it reopened as a theatre in the nineteen nineties. Today, it is famous today for its ‘Amateur Nights', when the public can vote for their favourite actor, artist or musician, hence the play on the word ‘poll' or vote in the title, recalling the election of the American president. The flashing sign alternately illuminates all the letters (Apollo) or only the central ones (poll, and sometimes also pollo, a reference to the Spanish community living in the neighbourhood).”
The most unexpected evidence of the value of collaboration can be found in Wishing Arena. “The project began as a tribute to the artist's mother,” explains Tenconi, “who had been the first of the family to move to the United States in order to provide a better future for her children. This aspect of the selfless work necessary to fulfil someone else's wishes is at the heart of the installation. In fact, the work only functions when two people interact: one expresses a wish and the other, like an intermediary, turns on a light bulb. When the exhibition opened, all the wishes were ‘switched on' and the intention was to leave the work like that, like an altar full of wishes. However, the public made clear a strong desire to be able to express their wishes and continuously interact with the work.”
And, on the subject of exchange, it is interesting to note that, in recent months, the exhibition has been in dialogue with Chiara Camoni 's adjacent solo exhibition, Chiamare a raduno. Sorelle. Falene e fiammelle. Ossa di leonesse, pietre e serpentesse, curated by Lucia Aspesi and Fiammetta Griccioli. “This is something we frankly had not thought about,” admitted Roberta Tenconi, yet there turned out to be a real exchange of energy between the two exhibitions: “First of all, there was a lot of empathy between the two artists and the works of both of them are infused with the collaborative aspect”. Chiara Camoni also works a great deal with others. She created works in the early 2000s in collaboration with Ines Bassanetti, her grandmother, then 90-year-old and since deceased. Other works bring together natural elements collected with the help of other women close to her. “I think it was interesting, even as a visiting experience, to see how a similar approach, namely collaboration, can be explored in totally different ways, suggesting new insights.”
