NEW YORK, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem today named nineteen artists to be featured in Fictions, the fifth in the Museum’s signature “F-show” series of emerging artist exhibitions. Hailing from across the United States, the artists in Fictions engage with a variety of media—including video, photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation—as they investigate the complexities of the contemporary moment.

On view September 14, 2017 to January 7, 2018, Fictions, organized by Connie H. Choi, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, and Hallie Ringle, Assistant Curator, examines the stories that form the foundation of these artists’ practices, from the personal to the political and the everyday to the imagined. Fictions will be on view with We Go as They: Artists in Residence 2016–17, filling the galleries with two of the Museum’s most eagerly anticipated exhibition initiatives.

“Since its founding in 1968, the Studio Museum has been strongly committed to supporting and showcasing the work of emerging artists,” said Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden, “I am thrilled that Hallie and Connie are continuing the legacy of our beloved ‘F-shows’ with a new presentation of a diverse group of artistic voices, bringing to Harlem insightful perspectives from locations around the country, including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas.”

Echoing its predecessors Freestyle (2001), Frequency (2005–06), Flow (2008), and Fore (2012–13), the title Fictions refers to both the narratives that artists create and the stories that they refute in their work. Most of the artists in Fictions are presenting work at the Studio Museum for the first time, yet they all share concerns at the core of the Studio Museum’s mission, including questions around race and identity and the values of African-American, Latinx, U.S., and global artistic communities. Together, their works demonstrate the diversity and vitality of artistic practice in the United States today.

Artists in Fictions
Paul Stephen Benjamin (b. 1966, Chicago, IL; Lives and works in Atlanta, GA) • Krista Clark (b. 1975, Burlington, VT; Lives and works in Atlanta, GA) • Michael Demps (b. 1976, Detroit, MI; Lives and works in New Haven, CT) • Genevieve Gaignard (b. 1981, Orange, MA; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Nikita Gale (b. 1983, Anchorage, AK; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Allison Janae Hamilton (b. 1984, Lexington, KY; Lives and works in New York, NY) • Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989, Detroit, MI; Lives and works in Detroit, MI) • Texas Isaiah (b. 1986, Brooklyn, NY; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Los Angeles, CA; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Walter Price (b. 1989, Macon, GA; Lives and works in New York, NY) • Christina Quarles (b. 1985, Chicago, IL; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Deborah Roberts (b. 1962, Austin, TX; Lives and works in Austin, TX) • Sherrill Roland (b. 1984, Asheville, NC; Lives and works in Morrisville, NC) • Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, GA; Lives and works in Baltimore, MD) • Devan Shimoyama (b. 1989, Philadelphia, PA; Lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA) • Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA; Lives and works in Richmond, VA) • Maya Stovall (b. 1982, Detroit, MI; Lives and works in Detroit, MI) • Jazmin Urrea (b. 1990, Artesia, CA; Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) • Stephanie Williams (b. 1981, Washington, D.C.; Lives and works in Washington, D.C.)

We Go as They: Artists in Residence 2016–17, also on view September 14, 2017 to January 7, 2018, brings together the work of Autumn Knight (b. 1980), Julia Phillips (b. 1985), and Andy Robert (b. 1984), the 2016–17 artists in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Occupying studios on the third floor of the Museum, Knight, Phillips, and Robert have spent the year in close conversation with each other, negotiating the physical and psychological boundaries that come with working in close proximity to one another. Their work, though different in form, is united by an investment in exploring space, identity, and power. The title, We Go as They, makes reference to the cohort Knight, Phillips, and Robert formed, bound together by their experience in the residency, as well as the community of artists, curators, and Museum staff that surround and nurture the program.

Investigating the space between abstraction and figuration, Robert created a series of nocturne paintings of Harlem scenes that formally engages the history of painting, from French social realism to the Harlem Renaissance to Pop Abstraction. Phillips’s seemingly functional metal and ceramic objects relate to the human body and invite the viewer to imagine a potential use. Working with physical relations as a metaphor, Phillips makes reference to psychological, social, gender, and racial power dynamics. In her installation and performance, Knight continues her investigation of the flexible boundaries of identity and psyche through her fictional talk show, Sanity TV, where she promotes neither sanity nor insanity.

We Go as They: Artists in Residence 2016–17 is organized by Hallie Ringle, Assistant Curator.