Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven, A Hell, A Dream Deferred
Curated by Allison K. Young
October 5, 2018 - January 6, 2019
New Orleans Museum of Art
Lina Iris Viktor is widely recognized for her exploration of art’s connection to history, spirituality, and prophecy. Recasting factual and fantastical narratives surrounding America’s involvement in the founding of Liberia, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. explores a mythicized history of the West African nation. Established as an act of American “altruism” following the abolition of slavery, the Republic of Liberia appears as an uneasy utopia, both a paradise lost and a cautionary tale on the pathology of colonization. Central to Viktor’s gilded portraits is the mercurial figure of the Libyan Sibyll; from the Latin sibylla meaning prophetess, she is an ancient figure of fate and foresight, later invoked by eighteenth-century abolitionists as the predictor of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Across the series, Viktor’s soothsayer navigates an evocative landscape which references modern and traditional West African textile culture, contemporary African portrait photography, and the national iconography of both Liberia and the United States. In resurrecting a long-forgotten history collective to Liberia and the antebellum United States, A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. embodies the artist’s enduring interest in transforming perceived absences into sources of light … and life.
Selected Press
Dr. Sarah Clunis for Antenna.Works
“In her first major solo museum exhibition, Viktor’s work is artfully curated by Allison Young, NOMA’s most recent curatorial ingénue and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art. And in the vein of her other Black Baroque contemporaries, such as Kehinde Wiley, Ebony Patterson, and Yinka Shonibare, Viktor’s new opus is even more excessively adorned than such iconic works as her 2016, Yaa Asantewaa, named after the Ashanti Queen who led the War of the Golden Stool against British colonialism in 1900.” Read More
Victoria Stapley Brown for The Art Newspaper
“As cultural institutions in New Orleans mark the city’s tricentennial with exhibitions that both celebrate and grapple with its complex history, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred (until 6 January 2019) at the New Orleans Museum of Art mines the underexplored connections between the city and Liberia. “The narrative is buried a lot, even though it’s part of American history,” says the British-Liberian contemporary artist Viktor, who made 11 new works specifically for this show, her first solo museum exhibition. Read More
Jasmin Hernandez for Cultured Magazine
“Viktor’s NOMA debut occurs during New Orleans’s historic tricentennial. In homage, a selection of the prestigious Orléans Collection— named, like the city, for the Duke of Orléans and counting Old Masters such as Rubens, Veronese and Rembrandt within its holdings— is also on view at the museum. “I was thinking about what it would mean to have classical portraits in visual conversation. It is significant that the series should debut in the U.S. South, as the history of Liberia is intimately entangled with that of antebellum America,” says exhibition curator Allison Young. “It represents one chapter within this country’s own struggle to reconcile the moral and philosophical contradictions of its early years.” Read More
Sarah Cascone & Caroline Goldstein for ArtNet
“It’s the first museum solo show for Lina Iris Viktor, who has become known for stunning, richly gilded self portraits that celebrate black identity. Here, she’s created a mythologized history for Liberia, founded following the abolition of slavery in the US as a home for freed slaves, depicting the prophetic figure of the Libyan Sibyl, a figure from Greek mythology who seems to offer a warning against the evils of colonization.” Read More
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