In Praise of Black Errantry

During the 60th Venice Biennale, Unit presents In Praise of Black Errantry, a group exhibition that celebrates the Black radical imagination. Curated by Indie A. Choudhury (The Courtauld Institute of Art), the exhibition brings together works by 19 modern and contemporary Afro-diasporic artists.

Errantry is a poetics.  —  Édouard Glissant

Errantry defines the Black diaspora and its imaginary. The Martinique-born French writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) proposed errantry as a form of freedom and resistance. For Glissant, errantry evoked a spiritual or purposeful wandering beyond national borders or the limits of exile. As a mode of survival, errantry infers fugitivity as well as improvisation. Underlying the emergence of Black modernity, errantry has engendered the dissonance of jazz, the politics of refusal, and ultimately, revolution.

In Praise of Black Errantry explores the poetics of errantry as an aesthetic possibility. The Afro-diasporic artists in this exhibition take up errantry as a radical strategy that defies boundaries, advocating spontaneity and experimentation beyond cultural fixity or political containment. Spanning different themes, the exhibition considers how artists have refuted conventional codes of representation or pushed against the constraints of formal rules of style, colour, medium, or genre towards technical innovation, artistic evolution, and liberation.

The poetics of errantry offers a counter-discourse about Black cultural production, raising critical questions: how has errantry been employed aesthetically and politically as a form of Black dissent? How do incidental encounters of the itinerant or the arbitrary inform technical and formal innovations as well as other artistic freedoms? How do the terms of disobedience and waywardness figure in the art of the Black diaspora?

On view from 17 April–29 June, In Praise of Black Errantry is curated by Indie A. Choudhury (The Courtauld Institute of Art) with assistant curator Kelsey Corbett (Unit). The exhibition will be held in the Palazzo Pisani S. Marina, a 15th-century palazzo located in the Cannaregio area of Venice and depicted in a Renaissance painting by Jacopo de’ Barbari. The palazzo was previously host to the Diaspora Pavilion in 2017 and the Croatia National Pavilion in 2015.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue will include contributions by the curator Indie A. Choudhury, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art; artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase; award-winning poet Roger Robinson; and Robert G. O’Meally, the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.

In Praise of Black Errantry marks Unit’s inaugural presentation at the Venice Biennale as part of the gallery’s continuing commitment to research-led initiatives that nurture artists and contribute to contemporary cultural discourse beyond conventional programming structures.

Indie A. Choudhury is an art historian and curator. As Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, she specialises in the art, literary, and sonic cultures of the Black Atlantic. Recent and forthcoming work includes publications on Clementine Hunter and Toni Morrison, Hew Locke, and the forthcoming book Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin published by Duke University Press in 2024.

The assistant curator Kelsey Corbett is the Head of Research and Programme Curator at Unit. Her research interests include post-colonialism and the ways in which artworks and display strategies can productively engage with complex histories. Prior to this, she worked in research and curatorial roles at Thaddaeus Ropac, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Tate Modern, London.

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Image 1: Anya Paintsil, Nose bleeds, no back teeth and no eyebrows. I’m a slow learner apparently. Except for knitting, picked that up in seconds, 2023, Acrylic, wool, polyamide, cotton, alpaca, wire, hair beads, human hair, synthetic hair and rubber bands, on hessian, 155 x 128 cm. Image courtesy and © the artist

Image 2: Adelaide Damoah, Ejwe (Four), 2023, Cyanotype, ink, skin paint, gun metal pigment and gold on watercolour paper, 39 x 57 cm. Image courtesy and © the artist

Image 3: Keith Piper, The Seven Rages of Man (detail), 1984-2018, Sculptural installation. Image courtesy Sheffield Museums and © the artist

Image 4: Romare Bearden, Seance, 1984- 86. Image ©️ Romare Bearden Foundation, courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.