Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce a solo presentation by Jibade-Khalil Huffman for the Art Basel OVR:2020.
The interconnected nature of race, rage, and anxiety inspires Huffman’s newest body of work and begins with the piece Ballot or the Bullet. The title is a reference to Malcolm X’s speech on radical black nationalism that extolls “the type of Black man on the scene in America today [who] doesn’t intend to turn the other cheek any longer.” The figure of X’s speech calls to mind the public rage and uprising following in the wake of continued brutality and murder by the hands of the police— from athletes using their public platform to raise awareness of racialized violence to the literal tearing down of monuments that present oppressors as heroic figures.
The cacophonous imagery relays larger circuitous themes of Huffman’s work. Following the poetic logic of Huffman’s collaged videos and images turns this public sense of rage inwards, revealing the anxiety, exhaustion, and frustration on a personal level.
The selection for Art Basel:OVR includes several works from recently opened museum shows which have been made inaccessible due to the global pandemic. Utilizing the potential of mass visibility with his chosen mediums, Huffman’s projects enter public consciousness and open the doors of shuttered institutions through online visibility.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman’s (b. 1981) received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University, an MFA in Studio Art from USC, and a BFA from Bard College. He currently has two museum solo exhibitions on view: Now That I Can Dance, Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA and Action Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, AZ. Previous exhibitions include the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” (2014); MOCA Los Angeles (2017); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (2015); The Jewish Museum, New York (2016); LAX ART (2016), The Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017); Swiss Institute (2017); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2018); Ballroom Marfa (2018) The Kitchen, NYC (2018) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2019). His past performances include P.S.1/MoMA (2010), MOCA Los Angeles (2014), ICA, Philadelphia (2017), Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2019) and Frieze Projects (2019). From 2015-2016, he was Artist in Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Huffman is also the author of three books of poems: Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2015), James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011), and 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008).
