Overview

Whitfield Lovell: Passages is the most comprehensive survey to date of work by the contemporary artist Whitfield Lovell, whose poetic and intricately crafted tableaux and installations document and pay tribute to the history and cultural memory of the African American experience. This publication accompanies a major traveling exhibition of the artist’s powerful Conté crayon drawings combined with objects to create assemblages and multi sensory installations that focus on aspects of Black history, raising questions about identity, memory, and America’s collective heritage. Lovell, a 2007 MacArthur Foundation fellows hip recipient and conceptual artist, creates exquisite drawings inspired by his own collection of vintage photographs of unidentified African Americans taken between the Emancipation Proclamation and the C ivil Rights Movement. He pairs his drawings done on paper or salvaged wooden boards with found objects, creating enigmatic assemblages and stand – alone tableaux that are rich with symbolism and ambiguity and evoke personal memories, ancestral connections, and the American past.

About the Editor

Michèle Wije is a curator at the American Federation of Arts.