Christopher Myers: The Hands of Strange Children: Gallery Exhibition at 52 Walker Street

4 March - 2 April 2022
  • James Cohan is pleased to present The Hands of Strange Children, an exhibition of new work by Christopher Myers, on view at the gallery’s 52 Walker Street location from March 4 through April 2, 2022.
     

    For The Hands of Strange Children, Myers has created a series of narrative tapestries and a suite of stained-glass paintings that excavate the lives and legacies of six revolutionary prophets: Wovoka, Nongqawuse, Nat Turner, Hong Xiuquan, Te Ua Haumene, and Alice Lawkena. 

  • Spanning a wide geography of times and places, Myers sees these figures as representatives of a grand tradition of colonized peoples. Each took what was not theirs and made it their own, using the very tools of subjugation to build emancipatory philosophies and movements. Myers examines the beautiful failures of these prophets, filtering them through the “transformative materiality of narrative” to create portraits of icons of resistance that speak powerfully to the present.

  • The stained-glass paintings in the exhibition each depict a prophet, capturing a moment of liberatory transcendence in a medium most...

    The stained-glass paintings in the exhibition each depict a prophet, capturing a moment of liberatory transcendence in a medium most commonly associated with sacred Christian architectural spaces.

     

     

  • Myers condenses the signs and symbols of their spiritual and historic narratives into syncretic portraits of these revolutionary icons.

    Myers condenses the signs and symbols of their spiritual and historic narratives into syncretic portraits of these revolutionary icons.

  • For Myers, there is a connection between the material form of the works and the histories they explore: “Just as...

    For Myers, there is a connection between the material form of the works and the histories they explore:

     

    “Just as quilts are made from scraps of fabric, the mythologies of these movements are made from a mixture of religious stories from all around the world.”

    - Christopher Myers

  • In his hand-stitched textiles, Myers uses appliqué, a technique that appears often in quilting and banner making, and has developed...

    In his hand-stitched textiles, Myers uses appliqué, a technique that appears often in quilting and banner making, and has developed as a tangible union of diverse cultural and visual practices. Each tapestry creates an emblematic space for the narratives of these prophets’ hybridized visions to unfold.  

     

  • In Knowledge of the Elements, Revolution of the Planets, 2022, Myers explores Nat Turner’s understanding of himself as a vessel for special wisdom. Four disks at the corners of this tapestry refer to four different kinds of knowledge. This reclamation of spiritual and cosmological knowledge has special relevance for an African-American of his time, when reading itself was an outlawed practice for Black bodies. Turner is depicted at the crossroads of all four knowledge systems, an inheritor and interpreter of multiple traditions.

  • In Rather Bright Complexion, Myers crafts a searing sculptural portrait of Nat Turner’s head. The work is cast from palm...

    In Rather Bright Complexion, Myers crafts a searing sculptural portrait of Nat Turner’s head. The work is cast from palm oil soap, a reference to the grisly treatment of Turner’s remains. This severed head is seated on a silver platter, a composition that draws upon Caravaggio’s multiple depictions of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, a prophetic Christian Saint who lived and died, as Turner did, preaching the word of God. 

     

     

  • The works in The Hands of Strange Children exemplify Christopher Myers’ deft hand in translating histories and mythologies gleaned through careful research into evocative material form. 

     

  • In the back gallery of the exhibition is the monumental tapestry Sarah Forbes Bonetta as Omoba Aina as Persephone, 2021,...

    In the back gallery of the exhibition is the monumental tapestry Sarah Forbes Bonetta as Omoba Aina as Persephone, 2021, from Myers’ related project I Dare Not Appear. In this work, Myers visually unfolds the defining moments of Forbes Bonneta’s existence as a string of elliptical moments that resonate across a century. She, like the six prophets, is envisioned as an icon that stands at the intersection–or collision–of multiple narratives of slavery, colonization, civilization, and culture.

  • For Myers, Forbes Bonetta’s life in the diaspora speaks to the realities of colonialism, which gave rise to the spiritual...

    For Myers, Forbes Bonetta’s life in the diaspora speaks to the realities of colonialism, which gave rise to the spiritual hybridities he explores further in the other works on view. 

  • That these six anti-colonial prophets ultimately failed to achieve their aims is, for Myers, instructive. It suggests that perhaps the systems and hegemonies of the world are intractable, and that we must instead find new ways to define freedom and dignity within these systems. Their failures provide the artist, and his viewers, with a roadmap for new emancipatory possibilities.  

     

  • Checklist

  • For more information on the historical figures referenced in The Hands of Strange Children, click here→ 

  • Christopher Myers is an artist and writer whose transdisciplinary work is rooted in storytelling. Myers delves into the margins of...

    Christopher Myers is an artist and writer whose transdisciplinary work is rooted in storytelling. Myers delves into the margins of the historical archive to reconstruct narratives that parse the slippages between history and mythology. His deeply researched and diverse practice spans textiles, performance, film, and sculptural objects, often created in collaboration with artisans from around the globe. 

     

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