The Brooklyn Museum presents a conversation with artists Brendan Fernandes, Nandipha Mntambo, and Saya Woolfalk for the opening program of Disguise: Masks and Global African Art
Brendan Fernandes (Canadian, born Kenya, 1979). Neo Primitivism 2, 2007-14. Installation with plastic masks, deer decoys, and vinyl spears, dimensions variable. Loan from the artist. © Brendan Fernandes. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
On Thursday, April 28 at 7 pm, the Brooklyn Museum hosts a roundtable with Disguise: Masks and Global African Art artists Brendan Fernandes, Nandipha Mntambo, and Saya Woolfalk and curator Kevin Dumouchelle. Together they will discuss masking as metaphor–in art, in politics, and in imagining the past and future. The conversation will take place in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium and is free as part of Thursday Nights hosted by Squarespace. Tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis at the Admissions Desk starting at 6 pm.
At 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm dancer Djassi DaCosta Johnson performs Fernandes’s In Touch, which uses costume and choreographed gesture to question how we interact with art in museums. Performances will take place in the installation Double Take: African Innovations.
Disguise brings African masquerade to life with a groundbreaking installation that connects works by 25 contemporary artists with examples of traditional masquerade. By putting on a mask and becoming someone else, artists reveal hidden realities about society, including those of power, class, and gender, to suggest possibilities for the future. Through play and provocation, and by engaging both African history and contemporary global politics, Disguise invites viewers to think critically about their world and their place within it. The exhibition includes an immersive and lively installation of video, digital media, sound, and installation art, as well as photography and sculpture. The show will be on view from April 29 through September 18, 2016.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238