Dana Washington-Queen: Resume At the Point of Interruption

Sep 9, 2022 – Jan 8, 2023

Dana Washington-Queen: Resume At the Point of Interruption

Lens-based artist dana washington-queen (b. 1985) uses writing and video-making as an inquiry into freedom and escape. What are freedom’s possibilities? Where can it be found; what does it feel like? These questions, among others, animate the video installations, collages, and sculptures that constitute Resume at the Point of Interruption.

The title of this exhibition is taken from the National Basketball Association rulebook, section XIV, which stipulates that officials can suspend a game for unusual circumstances. The game must then resume where the basketball was at the point of interruption. washington-queen, who grew up playing sports, situates the iconography of basketball in histories both deep and personal to see how the laboring, spectacularized, and surveilled Black body functions for different gazes—and performs minor, fugitive, and creative acts of freedom at the same time.

washington-queen’s text “The Black Noetic” (on view here) is the conceptual springboard for all of the presented works. This text was inspired in part by poet Kevin Young’s statement that “the fabric of black life has often meant its very fabrication, making a way out of no way, and making it up as you go along.” Ultimately, the exhibition is an experimental portrait of improvisatory Black life, a moving portrait that traces a continuum of interruption, suspension, and possible recovery.

Documentation of all works and select videos will also be accessible on thepointofinterruption.com.

Resume at the Point of Interruption was curated by Enjoli Moon.

This exhibition is supported by the Ellsworth Kelly Award, made possible by the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.