Revolution from without…
January 17 - May 4, 2019
Dread Scott, Imagine a World Without America, 2006. [Image Description: A map of the world forms the background of this image with most of North America obscured. The oceans are green and the land is orange. Text on top of the images says “IMAGINE A WORLD” in black bold font and a faded green font continues the phrase with “WITHOUT AMERICA.”]
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present Revolution from Without…, the first in a two-year series of exhibitions under the larger title Revolutionary Cycles, at the Foundation’s exhibition space, The 8th Floor, in New York City. Each of the six installments will be organized around a single theme, including labor, gender, the media, surveillance, and family. Through each exhibition, Revolutionary Cycles will focus on different modes of resistance, emphasizing how revolutionary gestures are manifest in the contexts of art and life.
Opening on January 17, 2019, the inaugural exhibition Revolution from Without…will feature five artists and two collectives – Tania Bruguera, Tony Cokes, Chto Delat, Raqs Media Collective, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Dread Scott, and Mark Wallinger – whose practices engage structures of power that determine who is entitled to, and excluded from, access to human rights and positions of privilege.
The title suggests that social and political change can come from the margins of the polity, motivated by conditions of being without: without rights, without capital, without representation. Each artist specifically addresses key political and historical moments in which the articulation of rights has been advanced. The artworks in the exhibition provide historical context for understanding current political conditions, with specific projects signaling activist methodologies involving research, education, critique, and more radical forms of protest.
With specially commissioned artworks, as well as restaged installations, Revolution from Without… will lay a foundation for the central themes which will be expanded upon in the subsequent exhibitions in Revolutionary Cycles, ultimately questioning how art spaces can be sites for organizing.
The exhibition is curated by Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, with a brochure essay by writer Rehan Ansari.
Installation views of “Revolution from Without…” at The 8th Floor, January 2019. Photos by Julia Gillard. Courtesy of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.