Fred Wilson (artist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Conceptual artist Fred Wilson, born in 1954 in the Bronx, describing himself as of "African, American Indian, European and Amerindian" descent. [1] He received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 1999 and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. Wilson represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003. [2]
In his 1992 seminal work, “Mining the Museum,” Wilson reshuffled the Baltimore Historical Society’s collection to highlight the history of slavery in America. For the 2003 Venice Biennale, Wilson created a multi-media installation which borrowed its title from a line in "Othello." His elaborate Venice work, "Speak of Me as I Am," focused on representations of Africans in Venetian culture.[3]
While Wilson did receive a BFA from SUNY/Purchase in 1976, where he was the only black student in his program,[4] he says that he no longer has a strong desire to make things with his hands. “I get everything that satisfies my soul,” he says, “from bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way I want to see them.” [5]
Wilson's unique artist approach is to deconstruct the traditional display of art and artifacts found in museum collections. With the use of new wall labels, sounds, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects, he leads viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning.
Wilson's unorthodox artistic practice asks—and forces us to ask—what kinds of biases our cultural institutions express and how have they shaped our interpretations of artistic value and historical truth.
