Basil Kincaid: The Rolling Fields to My House
Galleria Poggiali Milano
Foro Bonaparte 52 – 20121 Milano
09.15.2021 – 11.20.2020
Opening Wednesday 9/15/2021 from 6:30pm to 9pm
Information T: +39 02 72095815 E: info@galleriapoggiali.com galleriapoggiali.com
A research driven by the desire to understand the plot of one’s personal and cultural identity within the African diaspora, filtered by the superstructures of his American experience. The new body of works with which the Ghanaian-American artist Basil Kincaid (1986, St. Louis, Missouri) makes his debut in the Milanese branch of the Galleria Poggiali with his first Italian solo exhibition entitled The Rolling Fields to My House moves in this direction.
Basil Kincaid, The Ecstasy of Being, courtesy the artist
Through collages, photographs, installations, performances and above all with the quilting technique (assembly of fabric fragments) – made with found, recovered and donated materials – Basil Kincaid questions social customs while designing alternative cultural fabrics.Resourcefulness and freedom of imagination emerge as critical components in the liberation of the spirit. Co-create places that stimulate the ancestral memory of love understood as the freedom inherent in us to activate spaces that participate in shared liberation on a local and global scale.
The Rolling Fields to My House uses the practice of ‘clearing’ to create belonging. The quilts, sculptures and drawings on display represent the internal communication that the artist cultivated to arrive at a place that made sense for the only black boy in a class of white peers.Kincaid’s move to Ghana in 2020 allowed him to revisit previously developed worlds and build them in new formats. The black entity that appears in these works is a solid root of the self and of the observer; an omniscient witness attuned to all versions of himself across exponential dimensions. Probably an ever-present body that has planned to encounter and explore the polychromatic nature of the black diasporic identity on various terrains, this time on Italian soil.
Basil Kincaid, The Dancers, courtesy the artist
Quilts hanging on the wall are alienated from their usefulness and manipulated in the way they are read. Throughout his work, Basil focuses on how place shapes our perspective, the notion of belonging and how we perceive ourselves. His work is composed primarily of found or donated materials that have great emotional significance to those who once enjoyed them.The practice of quilting has a long history in the family that has been handed down for over 7 generations. Quilting, within the black cultural tradition, has always served as a revolutionary space of joy, courage and community in direct contrast to social and financial submission.
“It’s a way to honor my predecessors as I address the questions and concerns about where they are, where we are, today. – Says Basil Kincaid – It is a way to restore and rebuild with the initiative inherent within us. “
Basil Kincaid, Lullaby, courtesy the artist
Basil Kincaid (born 1986, St. Louis, Missouri) is a post-disciplinary artist who through his research constructs, contemplates and reviews self-imposed and conditioned limits and explores their fixities. Through the technique of quilting, collage, installation and performance made with recycled or donated materials, Kincaid abandons social customs to devote himself to the drafting of alternative cultural fabrics. Kincaid studied drawing and painting at Colorado College, graduating in 2010.He has collaborated with Kavi Gupta Gallery, Mindy Solomon, Kravets Wehby and Carl Kostyal and others. In 2019, Kincaid debuted his first institution-commissioned work, the performance “The Release”, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis MO. In 2020 Kincaid received the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. In 2021, Kincaid was selected as a fellow for the United States Artist Fellow and joined the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Basil Kincaid, A Day at Victoria Glades, courtesy the artist
