Scrawlspace

Curated by Emily Alesandrini and Lucia Olubunmi R. Momoh,
2024 Curatorial Open Call Recipients

September 19 – December 7, 2024

The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present Scrawlspace, a new group exhibition curated by Emily Alesandrini and Lucia Olubunmi R. Momoh at The 8th Floor on view from September 19 through December 7, 2024. The project brings together work by artists of the African diaspora who conceptually mine and aesthetically manipulate text, writing, and language. Artists include Sadie Barnette, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Sonya Clark, Tony Cokes, Renee Gladman, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Steffani Jemison, Glenn Ligon, Adam Pendleton, Jamilah Sabur, Gary Simmons, and Shinique Smith.

Scrawlspace explores the in/ability of language and writing to fully encapsulate Black experiences. Through the visual re/working, re/imagining, and de/construction of texts, Black artists examine historically charged relationships to the written word while revealing new possibilities for and beyond writing. Some render phrases and words illegible, glyphic, or coded to the point that letters and graphic gestures no longer constitute language but become images, demonstrating an opacity, complexity, and multiplicity of meanings beyond sanctioned readings and definitions. The act of annotating and obscuring words and documents often serves as an intervention into difficult histories, such as the threat and power of state documentation and unknowable silences and omissions within the archive. And yet, artists also demonstrate how language can be utilized in acts of refusal, sabotage, and liberation, serving as instruments in community and world-building, and to explore pleasure and identity.

The term “scrawlspace” appears in Fred Moten’s 2017 Black and Blur, where he credits the term to Hortense Spillers. However, Moten could not locate the word’s origin in Spillers’ published writings, citing instead poet and scholar Harryette Mullen who previously credited “scrawl space” to Spillers. Spillers herself has recently shared with the curators that she has no recollection of inventing “Scrawlspace/scrawl space.” While its source remains unresolved, given the long history of the appropriation, manipulation, and theft of Black women and queer folx’s labor and language, Moten and Mullen’s insistence on citing Spillers demonstrates a shared admiration for (and perhaps attachment to) the concept, amplifying its enchantment and use. Its movement through various texts reflects the beautifully queer and caring traditions of Black writing and research practices, while also speaking to the collective nature of the creation process and of giving meaning to words. In this way, Scrawlspace also draws attention to citation as Black liberation praxis rooted in notions of kinship, weaving together writing, research, and visual creative practices. The curators are honored to carry on the conversation with an exhibition that features work by visual artists who seek liberation in, through, and against language.

Together, the works in Scrawlspace make apparent the de/re/constructive potential of the written word. As Saidiya Hartman reminds us, “The story exceeds the words…” By illustrating the in/ability of language to truly encompass the excess that is Black life, artists expand and invent new vocabularies, definitions, and grammars, while insisting that we must keep writing.

To learn more about the artists in Scrawlspace, please find a full press release linked below.

Press Release PDF
Brochure
Plain-text essay

Emily Alesandrini (she/her) is an independent curator, art historian, and writer working in New Orleans and New York. Her research concerns contemporary representations of race and gender with a particular focus on issues of opacity, ornament, and the diasporic body in art by women and artists of color. She strives to spotlight underrepresented voices in the field and work in community-based collaboration to subvert systems of oppression and erasure within and beyond art history. Alesandrini has contributed to exhibitions and publications at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, The Ford Foundation Gallery in New York, The Museum of Sex in New York, Prospect New Orleans, Wave Hill in the Bronx, and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, as well as Assembly Room Gallery. Her essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in ARTnews, Burnaway, and BOMB, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues.

Alesandrini graduated from Smith College with Latin Honors and a BA in Art History. As a fully-funded Elizabeth Allison Emory Scholar, she earned her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from Tulane University. She continues her studies as a doctoral student in Art History at Bryn Mawr College.

Lucia Olubunmi R. Momoh (she/they) is a curator, writer, and researcher currently working on a combined PhD in African American Studies and the History of Art at Yale University. Momoh’s research investigates the intersections of art, power, and identity. Centering African diasporic and Indigenous perspectives in Western art history, she investigates the relationship between constructs of race and the formation of national identities in the Americas during the nineteenth century, how institutions have perpetuated these volatile structures of oppression, and how art embodies the potential to dismantle them. Her independent curatorial practice supports and engages with artists who similarly seek to confront and visualize these complex structures.

Before coming to Yale, Momoh held curatorial positions with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Prospect.5 Yesterday we said tomorrow, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. She has written for exhibition catalogs and publications such as ArtNews, Hyperallergic, burnaway, and Made in L.A.: Acts of Living.

Image description: Made of glass, acrylic, paper, and polyester film materials, a wide rectangular work has a beige background, with large light blue and dark gray paint marks consuming the center third of the frame. On top of the paint, messy letters are printed in gray with yellow and orange outlining and underlining. The center two of the four lines might be read as: “TRSE WLD N CDE / AS N WLD N CBE”