BODY MEMORY - BODY VISION: Performance Works

SHERMAN FLEMING

SHERMAN FLEMING


Sherman Fleming received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA from Hartford Art School. His performance work has been featured at a number of institutions, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, and Franklin Furnace in New York. 

His solo exhibitions include Codewords, VIAP Galerie, Heerlen, Netherlands (2006); Watercolors, International Visions Gallery, Washington, DC (2001); and Big Rebus Paintings, Nexus Gallery, Atlanta (1990). His performances include OLYMPIC, Project Row Houses, Houston (2009), and Pretending to Be Rock, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia (2003).

He has participated in group exhibitions such as The Postmillennial Black Madonna, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn (2007); Whisper! Stomp! Shout! A Salute to African American Performance Art, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center (1996); Other Bloods, Museum Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (1995); Endurance, Exit Art, New York (1995); Glean, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2019).

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“I have been actively creating happenings, performance and function actions since the 1970s. My work often explores the body’s expressive power and the limits of endurance, confronting issues of black masculinity and the psychosexual tensions surrounding the black male body.” 

Sherman Fleming
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GLEAN


GLEAN is a performance that takes its cues from The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet, the painting that made me understand the role of art in society.  However, due to my recovery from hip surgery I was unable to perform the piece myself and so, the piece had to be contoured with a woman performing the action.  Artist Tamara Suber willingly agreed to perform in my stead.  The piece consisted of Tamara wearing a 2 ft. wooden cube on her back on which a landscape, similar to the landscape in Millet’s painting, is painted on all 4 sides of the cube. As she walks an audio of captured hate speech, gleaned from selected YouTube videos, is played, each audio captured is worse than the one before it.
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SHERMAN FLEMING INTERVIEW WITH CURATOR DANIELLE COBB 
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DC: How long have you been an artist?

SF: 43 years.

DC: Where did you finish your education?

SF: Hartford Art School, Connecticut. But it was when I worked as a museum guard at The Phillips Collection that I began to appreciate the importance of art and its societal role.

DC: Why performance as your main mode of communication and expression?

SF: While an undergraduate I struggled to find the importance of making an object to add to the objects already made. I began to appreciate conceptual art and, in particular, concrete poetry. While enrolled, I discovered the works of Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Lynda Benglis.


DC: The excerpt from GLEAN is remarkable. How did you come up with the concept?

SF: As an undergraduate I didn't understand artmaking, its impact, until I was introduced to Jean-Francois Millets The Gleaners. It appealed to me on so many levels, its social statement, its composition, how it was able to convey meaning without language. I wanted to make a piece that connected to my first appreciation of art.


DC: I listened to your interview for Artblog with A.M. Weaver, you talk about racial violence against black people. Can you talk a little more about this and how it relates to GLEAN?

SF: I would say that most of my work is about visualizing, as well as, valorizing the history of racial trauma. With GLEAN, I wanted to animate the crushing oppression of poverty, especially, when combined with the history of racism and white supremacy.

DC: As a black woman, it was emotionally painful to listen to these encounters. Do you believe the black people have a shared trauma? How does this relate to body memory?

SF: Shared trauma? I don't know. I can't think that far. I have my own trauma, I witness the trauma of my family members and friends and acquaintances, and especially how, in spite of the everyday crushing humiliation of racism, still, people find joy and laughter, which I find to be incredibly radical. My pieces are about expressing how resilient and wondrous Black people are under the weight of racism.


DC: You state the performance is about 40 minutes long. Do these recorded encounters become gradually more difficult to listen to? What do you want the viewer to take away from GLEAN?

SF: Do they?! Of course, I grabbed so many because there are so many, so many more, and they keep coming, but, at the same time, we keep coming. Not only that, I didn't filter or cleanup the dialogue because I wanted that static and grit in the raw audio. I want the viewer to appreciate both Black people's trauma and their response to it, which is resilient beauty.

DC: How has your attitude towards performance art changed over the years, if at all?

SF: Performance seems to respond vigorously to the activist demands of the times. But performance has always been a radical departure from the visual and performing arts and has traditionally been inclusive of multiple cultures.

DC: With BLM being so prominent in our society right now, do you see any changes in how artists engage activism in so far as bringing awareness to issues of racism and injustice?

SF: Social activism is the currency by which artists, of all disciplines, engage the public.

DC: I wonder whether you consider yourself a sort of activist artist or whether your art engages with activism? if so, how?

SF: No.


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nOOse




I visited sites along the Underground Railroad, historic sites in Philadelphia. My friend Ed came down from Brooklyn to give me a hand, which by that I mean, to take pictures of me while doing so. Though I had some vague idea of how I would be captured I relied on the chemistry between us and the sites we visited. After several weeks of rain, even on the morning of the shoot it was still raining, by the time we got to our first shoot it was done and the sun was getting away from the overcast.
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Having been some time since I last wore it, the space between then and now has given me perspective about this most recent function action begun in 2015. In fact, the picture of me in profile overlooking the Philadelphia cityscape, the one that I use as the banner on the n00se as well as on my business card was taken whilst I was standing across the street from Belmont Mansion where unbeknownst to be at the time the picture was taken is the site of the museum for the Underground Railroad. It was an incredible day of learning about the underground railroad, its conductors, station masters and engineers. The guides who graciously took us on tour were so committed to telling the histories of each site. I was so impressed by their fervent testimonies I felt, I don’t know, American. They were so committed to informing us of our shared history I felt an earnest kinship that extended to them and through them to the heroes that felt no human should be treated as chattel. Our histories are all around us and Philadelphia is chock-full; all it takes is to peer ahead.
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Ed shared a special relevance during the photo-shoot. He reminded me that in the last few weeks nooses were found hanging at the NMAAHC as well as at American University and other locations in DC.

He reminded me. Being mindful, rather, forgetful, is a position I often find myself in an hourly, if not, daily basis. There is so much trauma and terror, both in the world and right here in U.S., especially here that I register the latest atrocity of white violence, then, forget and move on. I have to. So much so that I am mostly unaware how the terror affects my day to day. I find myself looking at people, more than ever, looking at, studying actually, for tell-tale signs of white fear, for signs that they voted for this reality. A poet friend, Reuben Jackson, posted the next time your doctor asks how you’re feeling you should respond by informing her how the latest white terror is affecting your well-being, in fact, you are seeking medical attention because racism is driving your blood pressure up, having paranoid feelings when surrounded by white people, experiencing feelings of anxiety which can be traced to the latest police shooting, not to mention the 400 years of enslavement, disenfranchisement and terror that have been passed down through generations. How are you feeling today? Tired of racism and tired of white privilege. I wonder if white privilege  will dramatically dissipate before I die or will racism and its terror just be the state in which I will live my entire life.
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https://www.shermanfleming.com



 

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