Courtesy the Estate of Donald G. Rodney

Donald Rodney, "Self-Portrait: BlackMen Public Enemy" (1990). Light boxes with Duratran prints, 75 x 48 in.

   November 2008 Field Guide

William Eggleston

Anton Kannemeyer

The Brussels Dream

Lynne Marsh

Frances Stark

Oranges and Sardines

Renzo Martens

Dóra Maurer

Munio Weinraub and Amos Gitai

Sharon Lockhart

Stephan Balkenhol

Terence Gower

Jacques Bedel

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For British artist Donald Rodney, who died in 1998 at age 37 after a lifelong struggle with sickle-cell anemia, physical pain inspired poignant work that linked his tribulations to larger social ills, specifically racism and the marginalization of black artists. This exhibition examines the last 10 years of his life, when his “black” disease resulted in increasing hospitalization and agony. Rodney, who was active in 1980s black-artist coalitions, such as the Pan-Afrikan Connection (later the Blk Art Group), oscillated between intensely personal works (sometimes using his own X-rays or skin grafts) to political indictments. His Self-Portrait as Clinton McCurbin, for example, was named for a black man who died in police custody in 1987. Debuting at this exhibition is John Akomfrah’s film The Genome Chronicles, a three-part “poem” that Akomfrah says “captures the private drama of a man who, faced with death, turned to a camera for solace, for assurance, for respite, for redemption.”

"Donald Rodney" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2008 Table of Contents.