Zoë Buckman | vanessa german
We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires
June 25 - September 25, 2022

Above the Fire Swamp

We live in perilous times. In in-between times.
We live in the murkiest of fire swamps, frothing at the edges with the muck of centuries of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy that poisons the waters.

Around this murky, mucky, fire swamp, there are people who live on the outer banks. Through the haze, they have not seen the scuzzy, glooping, dangerous swamp...until now.
Their rose-colored glasses wind-swept off their sweet, taught, round, well-fed-on-organic-food-only, faces.

They say things like ‘now more than ever,’ or ‘we live in difficult and divided times.’

But we, The Femme-Bodied; The Queerly-inclined; The Melanated; The Erased; The Ignored; The Violated; The Beings who-are-born-with-the-burden-of-our-ancestors-oppression-while-living-in-a- world-that-still-refuses-to-see-us
We know better.

We know that the violence of ‘the now’ is not new. It is ages old.
Deep cesspools do not spring overnight. They are fed. They grow over time. Like a sucking void, the perilous now is a result of a precarious past.

And yet, we The Femme-Bodied; The Queerly-inclined; The Melanated; The Erased; The Ignored; The Violated; The Beings who-are-born-with-the-burden-of-our-ancestors-oppression-while-living-in-a- world-that-still-refuses-to-see-us, we not only survive the bone-crushing suck, we climb out above.

We tell our tales on our terms.
We sing our songs with our own symphonic melody.
We pull back the curtain.
We plant our seeds in the muck and let our flowers blossom.

There is no future joy without revealing the depths of our sorrows and struggles. There is nothing holding us back from building out of the fray.
We are the beings who fly above the fire swamp.

***

Above the Fire Swamp is a collection of thoughts that came to mind as I mulled over We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires, a dual artist exhibition with multimedia works by Zoë Buckman and vanessa german. This summer show, a pairing of works by two brilliant friends, explores the morphability of joy, pain, resilience, oppression, history, and future.

While drastically different in their aesthetics and technique, Buckman and german have a deep-rooted connection in their approach to art as a conduit for healing and growth. Their works originate from a multitude of sources, ranging from the micro-deeply-personal-narratives to the macro-collective-and- broad-reaching-shared-histories.

In some of the works, the grief, pain, and violence visually undergird the overarching work. Snippets of a narrative (a pair of sharp shears, a stretched grin-grimace, or a tepid statement of insecurity embroidered on a doily) bubble up to the surface. After all, one cannot hope to heal without witnessing the source of hurt. Each piece in the show is layered (physically and conceptually) with narrative and history. Each sculpture, tapestry, or drawing is as complicated as simply existing as a survivor in this strange present. The collection of works in the exhibition setting is a non-linear, nebulous journey through pain, reconciliation, and everything in between. Ultimately, the show is a salve to the sorrows of this murky swamp in which we exist.

Zoë Buckman’s works have consistently addressed the complexities of femme identities in the context of the wider, patriarchically-dominated world. She distills and humanizes these complexities through the lens of her own experiences. It is perhaps her formal training as a lens-based artist that lends itself to amber-trapping the emotion of a specific moment. While they are rooted in her own narratives, the experiences are universally relatable, particularly for women and femmes navigating a world historically dominated by patriarchal centricity and violence. From the clusters of gloves made from upcycled gingham placemats or fresh-snow-white wedding gloves; to the pulsating, gestural neon sculptures, each piece radiates the raw feeling of an intangible moment. In We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires, the text embroidered pieces articulate moments of insecurity or regret tinged with realization, and perhaps even hope. In for tonight (2021), the blue silk text embroidered against the stiff, vein-colored vintage napkin, reads “She thought she was done fighting...she thought.” The phrase, written by Buckman, implies a state of chronic, almost inherent violence. But it is also pregnant with the possibility of resilience. The piece emotes the interstitial space between oppression and perseverance.

Another text piece in the exhibition, maybe I won't be so silent (2021), also operates in the liminal space between two existences. Two orange sherbert, circular, vintage placemats depict identical silver-threaded dogwood trees which are crying—weeping tears of flowers. On the left tondo, Buckman embroidered “maybe I could have been more quiet” in a red thread as bright as newly oxygenated blood. The right circle reads “Maybe I won't be so silent.” The sibling textiles voice a sentiment all too familiar to women in toxic relationships (platonic, romantic, familial, etc).

While the text pieces articulate a sense of interior tension, Buckman’s other two-dimensional textile pieces markedly reflect moments of triumph and joy as a counterbalance to discomfort. A newer aspect of Buckman’s practice, the representational, figurative embroidery radiates resilience in lushly colored thread outlines. go melt back in the night (2022), depicts women dancing like reeds in a gentle riverfront breeze. A moment constructed of many moments, the figures lift their chins towards the unseen sky. These are gestures of reverence, joy, elation, and resilience. There is power in their unbridled movement. These dancers, all friends of Buckman, who sits in the center with raspberry hair, cross over onto the traditional floral embroidery of the canvas. Wildflower-colored women stretch across a showering rainbow bouquet. A cacophony of joy blooming through the darkness.

Like Buckman’s work, vanessa german’s torso-sized, mixed-material sculptures in We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires also cut through the muck and darkness of our White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchal violent reality. In the case of Power Figure to Letting Go/Cut It Out (2021), the piece literally slices into the air, severing the tether of historical and present oppression. Patinated sewing scissors, the type brought in leather snap suitcases from the Global South to the Global North, stand at attention atop a hillock of cowbells.The bronzed scissors exist in a state of precarity, a delicate tension that could lead to violence if the wild winds blow in the wrong direction. The sculpture is a material melting pot that comes together as a container for the multiple realities and emotional identities that exist simultaneously within a singular intersectional, Black, Femme, being.

The materials are the essence—the spice of not only the sculpture but of the self. These bits gleaned from thrift stores and internet scouring, create the rasa (flavor or essence in Sanskrit/Hindi) that Power Figure to Letting Go/Cut It Out (2021) is made of: How it is to let go. To need to let go. To have the things that you need to let go of still be holding onto you. Lots of scissors. Hand-hammered cowbells, love, meanness, refusal, rage, calloused hands, tears, glass bottles, red yarn, gold twine, black velvet, mirror, astroturf, luggage locks, peace of mind, acceptance, shouting it from the rooftops, heat, pain in the heart, health insurance to pay for therapy, going to the ocean, wood, the ritual of letting go, a goodbye song.

It’s worth noting here that not all of the materials are tangible, nor do they seem sensical at first glance. Instead, they are simultaneously concrete and ephemeral; both describable, and incapable of being properly articulated through written language. They are emotional, multisensorial, irreverent, and fleeting. Like a person, the complexity and multifacetedness of the materials extend far beyond the limited scope of our touch, sight, smell, and intellectual abilities. There is, in short, far more than meets the proverbial eye.

Many of the components in german’s sculptures seem absurd, naughty, and forbidden, while also darkly humorous. They prompt an uncomfortable giggle, the type of laugh elicited by anxiety, not joy. The disquieting nature of the materials is intentional. The absurdness is a reflection of our own grotesque violent histories, which are not as much “histories” as they are “still-presents.”

The largest of the german sculptures, Reproduction (2022), best encompasses this concept. A Frankensteined, three-headed, three-breasted, squat figure greets the viewer with a large net. The figure stands atop a stage or parade float platform. On display to entertain against an ornate beaded backdrop that reads ‘REPRODUCTION’ on the front.

The heads of the figures are easily recognizable as the heads on antique racist caricature coin banks, known as “Jolly Nigger Banks.” These mechanical toys were originally created in the late-nineteenth century and remained popular as mainstream consumer items through the mid-twentieth century, after which production ceased and the banks became antique collector's items. Except that production didn't cease with the “end of Racism in America” (note: racism never ended).

The heads that german incorporated into Reproduction (2022), are all severed from contemporary reproductions, now known as “Jolly Boy Banks.” german, a consummate frequenter of antique sales and flea markets has discovered a number of these racist replicas across the country. They are generally mass- produced abroad and then sold with slightly tweaked rebranding to skirt the outright racist name.

The continued production of these copies indicates a demand. Not simply for an artifact of ‘American history,’ but as an unabashed subscription to White supremacist ideologies. There is no other explanation or justification for their contemporary production.

german mounted three reproduction heads atop a Black femme torso, which she sculpted. The trunk and legs are nods to similarly racist caricatures of Black women. She is the “Mammy” archetype, with wide hips, large bare breasts, outstretched arms, and absurdly tiny hands. All wrapped in a garish red white and blue tented apron, resplendent with gold stars and money symbols. White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy at the forefront of American success.

The piece is, frankly speaking, terrifying. Humorous, but utterly off-putting. I imagine it would be disquieting to an avid collector (not that I can pretend to know what’s in the hearts of White Supremacists), given the perversion of its historical visual context. It is meant to be disturbing. It speaks unequivocally of American racism and violence, past- present- and future. It speaks of rape, of anti- Choice, enslavement, inequity, murder, sterilization, forced birth, to all of the contemporary violences done over and over and over and over and over again to Black people. Specifically Black women. (The title and incorporated text ‘Reproduction’ is an acknowledgment of the ongoing fight for Reproductive Rights and Justice, which is hand in hand interrelated with the struggle for Racial justice and other intersectional justices).

But this horror, this violence serves a purpose. The horrific historicity and symbolism behind each sculptural element is essential to the larger mission of reclamation of self, personal sovereignty, resilience, and joy. German is a subversive healer—creating works like Reproduction that make viewers sit in their discomfort (and for some, the discomfort is where they stay, rightfully so). But she also incorporates coded elements to lessen the blow. For those who know and need to know.

On the front, a spigot opens with piss yellow beaded strands pouring onto a tiny ceramic Colonial man. The hierarchy of scale adds to the absurdity. On the verso, a true statement of reclamation stamped around a circular mirror, against the sky blue glitter backdrop: “KISS MY ASS. YES. YOU.”

In one of his more famous essays, “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” (1960), writer James Baldwin writes: “It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.” Simply put, we are avoidant. We yearn to shy away from the realities of violence and vitriol that are the very foundations of our contemporary existence, until we can no longer avoid them. Until the covers are ripped back from us and we are forced to see. We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires is the truthful mirror.

It is not an easy show. Colorful, inviting, delicious upon first glance, it is an emotional rollercoaster with undefinable parameters. The work is layered, molded, mashed, sewn. It is precarious, delicate and dense all at once. It is bewildering, devastating, joyful, sneaky, deliciously forbidden, grotesque, soft, sharp, visceral and scant all at once.

Buckman and German do not make work that is easy for any audience. And that is what makes their pairing in this show so important—a journey of violence and healing through a multitude of lenses and perspectives that push us to question ourselves. We Flew Over the Wild Winds of Wild Fires is an indictment of American realities. And it is also a reminder that we—those who have swam through the muck of history—not only deserve healing, but can find it.

-Jasmine Wahi, June 2022

Zoë Buckman has a multidisciplinary practice which incorporates sculpture, textiles, ceramics, photography, and large-scale public installations. Adopting an explicitly feminist approach, her work explores identity, trauma, and gendered violence, subverting preconceived notions of vulnerability and strength.

The artist regularly chooses to work with objects symbolically associated with gender. Whilst her oft- adopted boxing gloves hint at a bellicose masculinity, Buckman also incorporates vintage fabrics into her work, from lingerie to dishcloths and table linen. These textiles, traditionally used and decorated by women, recall an intimacy with the body and a proximity to the domestic space. Bearing traces of their past, vintage fabrics point to a history of patriarchal subjugation, but also to the necessity and comfort of intergenerational dialogue between women.

Indeed, both verbal and non-verbal dialogue is an integral part of Buckman’s practice. Buckman’s eclectic choice of source material, the snatches of conversation, stained tablecloths, hip-hop lyrics, and, especially, lines from her late playwright mother’s scripts, all represent mnemonic totems which, when taken together, establish a deeply personal constellation of the artist’s lived experience.

Zoë Buckman is represented by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

vanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, in order to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.

A visual storyteller, german utilizes assemblage and mixed media, combining locally found objects to build protective ritualistic structures known as her power figures or tar babies. Modeled on Congolese Nkisi sculptures and drawing on folk art practices, they are embellished with materials including beading, glass, fabric, and sculpted wood, and come into existence at the axis on which Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism converge.

Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and begins to dismantle the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands. This activist instinct emerges in german’s work to postulate powerful narratives of freedom and love.

vanessa german is represented by Kasmin Gallery.