This Week At The Brooklyn Rail: Venice, Duchamp, Sepuya

The Brooklyn Rail was en fuego this week: I spoil nothing by quoting the kicker from Jesse Weaver Shipley’s powerful, broad, and focused review of In Minor Keys, Koyo Kouoh’s Venice Biennale, realized after her recent death by her team of collaborators [shoutout to one of that team, @siddharthamiter, for the heads up]: The uniqueness of this Venice Biennale is in positing African curation as an ontological stance from which to watch, listen, apprehend, adapt, connect fragments of the world, and forge new embodied modes of communication. Shipley has deep, full looks at many African participants whose contributions to the Biennale I’ve not seen discussed too much elsewhere, and certainly not with any depth. I only single out blaxTARLINES KUMASI because the Ghanaian art/teaching collective’s name has the same Marcus Garvey reference that moves through Kahlil Joseph’s collaborative film/installation BLKNWS. Between In Minor Keys, BLKNWS and the expanded Arthur Jafa-verse, and Saul…