Quadruple-Consciousness
Vox Populi
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Taisha Paggett, Decomposition of a Continuous Whole, performance/installation at Quadruple-Consciousness, 2010. Photo courtesy of Vox Populi.
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Artists Ei Arakawa and Sergei Tcherepnin perform All Apologies at Vox Populi for Quadruple-Consciousness. Photo courtesy of Vox Populi.
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Artist Ei Arakawa performs All Apologies at Vox Populi for *Quadruple-Consciousness. Photo courtesy of Vox Populi.
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From left: Sherin Guirguis, Mashrabeya, plywood, 2009. Kianja Strobert, Color Line, sculpture, 2010. Photo courtesy of Vox Populi.
Bringing together the works of 19 diverse artists, and guest-curated by Malik Gaines, Quadruple-Consciousness explored various tactics for representing the complex, contradictory legacies of cultural difference. The title is a multiplication of W.E.B. Du Bois' idea of ethnic "Double-Consciousness," expanded and further complicated to account for a broader range of identities, ethnic, gendered, or other. The exhibition included fictitious portraits, play-acting, historiographic collages, and alternate histories, realized in performance, video, installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture. An accompanying catalog documented the work, but also included a conversation between Malik Gaines and artists Ei Arakawa and Adam Pendleton, and a roundtable with Gaines, artist Michelle Dizon, and art historian Steven Nelson.