Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2020) Available to Purchase

Okwui Enwezor’s last exhibition was Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, with Massimiliano Gioni, Naomi Beckwith, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash as curatorial advisers, was shown at that museum from October 2020 (eighteen months after his death) to January 2021. It profiled the response of black artists to the rise of white suprematism in America. This short preface contrasted the sentiments in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address with the farcical but effective efforts of Donald Trump to present himself as presidential during the 2016 campaign. Works by several African American artists crystallized their sense of black grief in the face of a politically orchestrated white grievance.