July 31 - August 5, 2020
An ongoing exhibition series visible from the facade windows of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
From the Nasher:
“This week’s Nasher Windows installation features the work of Ciara Elle Bryant and runs July 31 – August 5, 2020.
Ciara Elle Bryant’s Server: A Streamed Revolution is a physical manifestation of virtual space, comprising objects, photographs, screen grabs, moving images, and an audio playlist in an environmental installation that transforms the Nasher vestibule into a document of the current reality of Black culture. Culled from social media channels, news outlets, literature, and other online sources over the past several months, Bryant’s imagery focuses on the major societal upheavals of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic, which is disproportionately affecting Black people and communities of color, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, which has led to worldwide protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. A true document of our current moment, Server: A Streamed Revolution crucially centers on the experience of Black people. Bryant’s dense collaging of images and media, as well as her focus on Black identity, situates her work among that of photographers Carrie Mae Weems and Hank Willis Thomas, while her expansion of media assemblage to the scale of architecture recalls Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau (1923-1937) or Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (1995).
The title, Server: A Streamed Revolution references jazz poet, musician, and author Gil Scott Heron’s 1971 spoken word track “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”—a phrase that became an early slogan for the Black Power movement and a warning to an apathetic society glorifying the white images that dominated popular culture and the media at the time. In a later interview, Heron spoke about the meaning behind the phrase: “When we said ‘the revolution will not be televised,’ we were saying that the thing that’s going to change people is something that no one will ever be able to capture on film. It’s about an image that you see and all of sudden you realize, ‘I’m on the wrong page.’ Or ‘I’m on the right page, but I’m on the wrong note.” Through her installation, Bryant documents, informs, and reclaims her view of the Black revolution and—through her powerful imagery—instills in her viewers the urge to change.
Artist Ciara Elle Bryant on Server: A Streamed Revolution:
“Over the last few months, I have been accumulating items from all over the internet to make an edition of Server that reflected what was going on in my world today—from the dire stress of being black in a pandemic, to the current revolution of Black people in America today. Since early March I have been hoarding digital information from these two events. They are the two things that are directly affecting my day to day life.”
About Ciara Elle Bryant
Ciara Elle Bryant is a multidisciplinary creative residing in Dallas, Texas. She uses mixed media techniques to discuss the identity of Black culture and how it exists in the new millennium. Bryant also facilitates multiple artist workshops during the year for at-risk youth and practicing artists to demonstrate the constant need for ever-evolving immersion in the arts while creating. Born in Miami, Florida, Bryant received her bachelor’s degree in Arts and Performance with a concentration in Visual Arts from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2016 and her MFA from Southern Methodist University in 2020.
For more informations, please visit the Nasher website.”
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