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The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is pleased to announce its fall exhibition program.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
October 19, 2019–March 14, 2020
Paul Mpagi Sepuya makes photographs of friends, artists, collaborators, and himself that challenge the history of photography and deconstruct traditional portraiture through layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery, and the perspective of the black, queer gaze. This exhibition—the artist’s first major museum survey—brings together work Sepuya has made across the last thirteen years, offering viewers the opportunity to trace connections across his life and practice.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya was organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, with Misa Jeffereis, Assistant Curator. The exhibition and catalog are generously supported by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; DOCUMENT, Chicago; team (gallery, inc.); Vielmetter Los Angeles; Hedy Fischer and Randy Shull; Nancy and Fred Poses; Hunt R. Tackbary; Heiji and Brian Black; and Thomas Lavin.
The Houston presentation is coordinated by Tyler Blackwell, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow at Blaffer Art Museum.
Jacqueline Nova: Creación de la Tierra
October 19, 2019–January 4, 2020
Jacqueline Nova (1935–75) was a pioneering figure of electroacoustic music in Colombia, and one of Latin America’s most important avant-garde and experimental musicians of the 20th century. She came of age in a repressive era known to Colombians as La Violencia (“The Violence”), a period of incessant, deadly struggle between the country’s two primary political parties. In 1972, Nova completed what is considered her crowning, if still rarely exhibited achievement: Creación de la Tierra (“Creation of the Earth”). In this altered sound recording, presented at Blaffer as a visually spare but immersive sound installation, she explores the boundaries between music and noise, and between the oral and the aural. By sonically altering a series of recordings of creation story chants by the indigenous U’wa peoples of Northeastern Colombia, and blurring the lines between noise and the human voice, Nova questions the political implications behind the intelligibility of speech, history, and place.
This presentation is the first installation of Nova’s work in a United States art museum. It is organized as a collaboration between Tyler Blackwell, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow at Blaffer Art Museum and Dr. Daniel Castro Pantoja, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Scholar-in-Residence in Musicology at the University of Houston, with the assistance of Ana María Romano G. It is supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.
Gareth Long: Kidnappers Foil
November 16, 2019–March 14, 2020
Kidnappers Foil is an immersive moving image installation by the Toronto-based artist Gareth Long that explores the social, cultural, and media histories of amateur American filmmaking through the lens of the itinerant Texan filmmaker Melton Barker. Between 1936 and 1976, Dallas-born Barker traveled from town to town across the American South and Midwest, using a single script to produce hundreds of unique iterations of the same film. Building from his interest in amateur production and histories of technology and mimesis, Gareth Long’s installation considers the surviving prints of Barker’s oeuvre as vernacular historical documents.
This presentation of Kidnappers Foil is Long’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States and the North American debut of the installation. It is curated by Max Fields and Andrew Hibbard.
About Blaffer Art Museum
Blaffer Art Museum is the contemporary art museum of the University of Houston. Its exhibitions and programs are always free and open to the public, striving to create community through dialogue, engagement, and participation. The Blaffer is a catalyst for creative innovation, experimentation, and scholarship, fostering collaborative opportunities across disciplines.
Generous support for Blaffer Art Museum exhibitions is provided by the Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs, the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, the Sarah C. Morian Endowment, the John P. McGovern Foundation, Jo and Jim Furr Exhibition Endowment at Blaffer Art Museum, the Farrell Family Foundation, and Blaffer Art Museum Advisory Board members.
