This fall, Aperture magazine presents an issue exploring the idea of
cosmologies--the origins, histories, and local universes that artists
create for themselves.
In an exclusive interview, Greg Tate speaks to Deana Lawson about how
her monumental staged portraits trace cosmologies of the African
diaspora. "What I'm doing integrates mythology, religion, empirical
data, dreams," says Lawson, whose work is the subject of major solo
exhibitions this year at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
In an in-depth profile of Judith Joy Ross and her iconic portraiture,
Rebecca Bengal shows how a constellation of strangers is brought
together through Ross's precise, empathic gaze. "Ross is guided by a
rapt, intense, wholehearted belief in the individual," Bengal writes.
A portfolio of Michael Schmidt's acutely observed work from the 1970s
and '80s reveals the realms within realms of a once divided Berlin,
while Feng Li's surprising black-and-white snapshots zigzag between
absurdist dramas in various Chinese cities. Ashley James distills the
surreal visions of Awol Erizku's still lifes and tableaux; Casey Gerald
contributes a sweeping ode to Baldwin Lee's stirring 1980s portraits of
Black Southern subjects; and Pico Iyer meditates on Tom Sandberg's
grayscales marked by both absence and reverence.
Throughout "Cosmologies," artists cast their attention on the great
mysteries of both personal and shared lineages, tracking their locations
in space, time, and history, and reminding us of the elegant enigmas
that can be unraveled close to home.
