In Motion: The Performative Impulse

Chapter 4 considers how a somewhat younger generation of artists using postminimalism and performance moved away from practices captivated by redeeming African American histories in realist and didactic ways, to those whose logic was more future-oriented and engaged with the virtual. David Hammons began his career with prints that seemed to offer a direct and easily digestible political style and message. But the materials he used—grease and pigment activated by his own body—set the stage for the development of a more idiosyncratic approach to artmaking. Senga Nengudi’s pieces composed of pantyhose and sand channeled feminist concerns. Maren Hassinger relied on industrial materials to elicit a postindustrial message. Houston Conwill created multimedia objects and accompanied them with contemporary rituals, while Nengudi and Hassinger more actively employed video with performance.