Collectivity as Form
Installation view of The Time Is Now! featuring works by Barbara Jones-Hogu, Misch Kohn, Bertrand Phillips, Nathan Wright, Richard Hunt, Sylvester Britton, and Frank Smith.
Newcity - September 2018
The show not only features the works of artists and designers making on the South Side from the 1960s through the 1980s, but also presents their world-making, community bonds, and collective action. For Zorach, “Collectivity is form,” and this collectivity extended beyond built environments to include informal spaces in-between: alleys, streets, and the broadsides of buildings, which served as the homes for group mural projects. With these works on public view, residents of these neighborhoods became active participants in the making process. As artists created collaboratively and publicly, residents and artists engaged in spontaneous conversations. Everyday neighbors learned about art-making processes and were inspired to found other forms of cultural productivity and coalition. At the same time, these residents gave feedback and offered knowledge they had on the work’s content to the artists, to eventually become incorporated into the final project. Such a project was the Wall of Respect, conceived by the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). In response to a fractured black community, both locally and nationally, the artists of the OBAC conceived of the Wall of Respect to unite their neighborhood’s members through the depiction of black heroes. These artists affirmed a black identity and instilled pride in the community’s residents by creating a positive self-image. The mural is no longer, but “The Time is Now!” offers its visitors a historical remnant with Jeff Donaldson’s “Study for the Wall of Respect (Miles Davis),” which the muralists later incorporated into the work.