Malik Gaines (born 1973, Visalia, California) is an American artist, writer, and professor who is one of three members of the artist collective My Barbarian.[1][2] The group formed in 2000 and includes Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade as they perform musical/theatrical and critical techniques to act out social difficulties.[3] They have exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum, New York in 2021.[4] Gaines's practice includes events and exhibitions, music composition, video work, scholarly research and collaboration.[5][6] He is the author of the book Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible (2017, NYU Press) and is the co-artistic director of The Industry opera company in Los Angeles.[7][8]
Malik Gaines | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1973 (age 50–51) Visalia, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of California, Los Angeles (BA, PhD) California Institute of the Arts (MFA) |
| Occupations |
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Early life and education
editGaines received a B.A. in History from UCLA (1996), an MFA in Writing from Cal Arts' School of Critical Studies (1999), and a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from UCLA (2011).[9]
Work
editGaines was an associate professor in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University and now an Associate Professor at UC San Diego.[10]
Alongside his performance practice, Gaines is a writer and scholar whose work has been published in Art Journal, Women & Performance, Artforum,[11] and BOMB Magazine.[12] Gaines has written essays for numerous exhibition catalogs and artist's books, for artists including Lorraine O’Grady, Jacolby Satterwhite, Nick Cave, Senga Nengudi, Judson Dance Theater, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Julius Eastman, Wu Tsang, amongst others. Gaines has curated a number of performance programs and exhibitions, such as Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum in 2012 and LAXART.[13][14][15][16][17]
Gaines is the author of Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible, which analyzes black art and music in the 1960s to trace out how performances of blackness rescripts and retools dominant discourses which constrain and contain black life. Reading artists through three registers—blackness (which he calls the "vanguard of negativity, the avant-garde of difference"), the period of the 1960s, and the transnational routes between the United States, West Africa, and Western Europe—Gaines explores how the "destabilizing excess of difference" challenge visual representation across sexual, racial, and political lines. For instance, in the first chapter "Nina Simone's Quadruple Consciousness," Gaines riffs on W. E. B. Du Bois' double consciousness to explore Nina Simone's "performance position that marshals paradoxical and simultaneous differences to present a provisional form of subjectivity." Drawing from Simone's Four Women and her performance practice of interjection, Gaines locates the political affect of Simone's work through the tensions inherent to the spaces between the multiple narratives, singer, and audience, reworking gendered, racialized fragmentation towards an act of political and personal agency.[18]
In 2021,The Whitney Museum[19] and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles[20] presented a 20-year survey of work by My Barbarian which included an exhibition, performance program, and a book publication.[21]
References
edit- ^ "Catherine Quan Damman on the art of My Barbarian". www.artforum.com. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ Cohan, Nate (March 18, 2014). "Modernist Mom: My Barbarian at the Whitney Biennial". ARTnews.com. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ Cascone, Sarah (August 12, 2019). "Editors' Picks: 19 Things Not to Miss in New York's Art World This Week". Artnet News. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "My Barbarian". whitney.org. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines". visarts.ucsd.edu. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "The Industry, L.A.'s groundbreaking opera company, casts new leaders". Los Angeles Times. June 21, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "Black Performance on the Outskirts of the left: a history of the impossible". tisch.nyu.edu. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines". theindustryla.org. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ McGarry, Kevin (September 22, 2016). "Eleven Artists Share Their Most Memorable Art-School Stories". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines". artsandhumanities.ucsd.edu. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines on SAME DIFFERENCE". www.artforum.com. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
- ^ "Malik Gaines – BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
- ^ "Made in L.A. 2012 | Hammer Museum". hammer.ucla.edu. June 2, 2012. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- ^ Valentine, Victoria L. (January 4, 2023). "Culture Type: The 18 Best Black Art Books of 2022". Culture Type. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ Guest, Africa in Words (December 16, 2020). "Review of "Paul Mpagi Sepuya": 'between desired object and desiring subject'". Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines on Julius Eastman". www.artforum.com. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "Malik Gaines on Wu Tsang". www.artforum.com. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ Gaines, Malik (2017). Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible. New York: NYU Press. pp. 38–47. ISBN 978-1-4798-0430-6.
- ^ "My Barbarian: 20 Years of Making Art and Theater Together". UCLA. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ Belmont, Sarah (April 8, 2022). "The 9 Best Booths at Expo Chicago: From Dazzling Peacocks to New 'Vogue' Covers Honoring Black and Indigenous Women Activists". ARTnews.com. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
- ^ "Johanna Burton's highlights of 2022". www.artforum.com. Retrieved January 27, 2023.