Cleo the Project Space presents HAMBONE, an exhibition featuring the works of Brandon English, Y. Malik Jalal, and Kare Williams. In the individual practices of these artists, the weight of attendance is held with penitence and celebration. The works in this exhibition form a vocabulary of performance and a grammar of rapture and rupture. In addition to his prolific painting practice, Kare Williams’ interest in Go-Go music led him to Tony, a character from his hometown of Washington, DC. Go-Go is known for its distinctive “pocket” beat and call-and-response interaction with the audience. Go-Go thrives in excess and is not bound by venue or instrument—the pocket is all it needs.
Within an event centered historical tradition, the phenomenological is often abandoned — testimony becomes a restorative act. Each artist assumes the tenuous position of participant, nearing reenactment. Much of the work is time-based, incorporating footage, archives, and performance; these are ongoing, cyclical, and implicating. The political production and reproduction of the image is a shared theme, explored with varying degrees of clarity. The display and exhibition of archival work, as in the practice of Brandon English, are critical. The integrity of the work hinges on how, or even whether, it is publicly viewed. In many ways, the gallery itself can undermine the work. His work refuses the audience, with partial inclusion or a fully present yet inaccessible, emphasizing the significance of evidence placed in plain view.
While considering English’s and Williams’ approach to performance, Hambone arose. Striking the body to provide percussion, like that of step teams, Hambone refers to Juba, an ecstatic African American dance tradition from the antebellum era with apparent roots in West Africa and inextricable from the American theater, film, and cartoons is the blackface vaudeville Hambone character. And, of course, stewing ham bones to enrich otherwise meatless meals with savory nutrient-dense marrow, a staple in the African American culinary tradition. It is all also relevant to my role in this exhibition, as I have looked to them for aim. The libidinal, as in appetite, the metabolic, and the erotic, not seduction or representation, but rather the subcutaneous is what is at play here — that which breaks the skin.
-Y. Malik Jalal
