Dominique Lévy is pleased to present its first exhibition with the artist Senga Nengudi. Organized by Begum Yasar, this selection of recent sculptures and 1970s performance stills inaugurates “The Back Room,” the gallery’s new 3rd floor project space.
In the 1970s, Nengudi worked in Los Angeles as part of an emerging community of African American artists that engaged with multiple radical political movements underway in the United States and around the globe, including the Black Power movement and the feminist movement. Using quotidian materials to create installations, sculptures, performances, and videos, these artists were key participants in the emergence of identity politics within the visual arts. During this time, Nengudi—who was formerly a dancer—began to develop a style of performance in which the human body entered into a relationship with sculptural constellations of worn nylon mesh pantyhose, sand, and other malleable, ordinary, or discarded materials. Such sculptures link the wall—the “proper” space of art—to the floor, the realm of movement, horizontality, gravity, and physical connection to the human body. Integrating the California assemblage aesthetic with contemporaneous forms of modern dance, Nengudi worked in collaboration with such peers as Maren Hassinger, Ulysses Jenkins, Noah Purifoy, Franklin Parker, Houston Conwill, David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Barbara McCullough, to activate and perform with her sculptures. These soft sculptures would be distended into various shapes and configurations in response to the choreographed actions of the performer. These early projects led to a long-standing collaboration with Maren Hassinger, who often dances with Nengudi’s sculptures.
