Art Metropole

#12975

Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art

Writer

Jennifer A. González

Date

2017

Publisher

The MIT Press

Format

Artists' Books

Size

6.3 × 10 × 0.8 in

Length

320 pp

Genre

Theory

Description

“_Subject to Display_ provides a historical record of a crucial body of visual art work and a theory of how this work effectively interrogates the formation of race in US culture. It also critiques the very terms through which ‘identity’ has been debated and often reified in both visual art practices and museum cultures. Subject to Display is an intelligent and crucial contribution to the understanding of racial discourse and visuality in late twentieth- and twenty-first century American culture.”
—Amelia Jones, Pilkington Chair, Art History & Visual Studies, School ofArts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester

“The intense moment of theorization of identity concepts developed in the nineties has apparently been brushed aside. Gonzalez provides a riveting response to the identity debate, making the case that it is time to refocus on its central questions. Subject to Display shows how certain artworks are capable of dismantling identity’s monolithic qualities by interrogating the conditions under which identity has been created and sustained.”
—Alexander Alberro, author of Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity

“What better way to understand the agency of display than through a close reading of works that do what they are about. With brilliance and grace, Gonzalez reveals the performative force of installations that restage in order to subvert the visual, material, and institutional practices that sustain race discourse.”
—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage

Softcover, perfect-bound, b&w and colour

March 2011

ISBN: 978-0-262-51602-0

About the Author
Jennifer A. González is Associate Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Frieze, World Art, Diacritics, Art Journal, Bomb, numerous exhibition catalogs, and anthologies, including With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture and Race in Cyberspace.

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