Grace Wales Bonner will once again be putting her artistic inclinations to good use. The London-based designer has been tapped by the Museum of Modern Art to take part in its Artist’s Choice series. For her “Spirit Movers” theme, she is curating approximately 50 works from MoMA’s collection.
“Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner — Spirit Movers” will bow on Nov. 18 in the museum’s street-level galleries and will remain on view through April 7.
This is the latest accolade that the creative has added to her growing portfolio. Last month, Bonner locked up the British Fashion Council/GQ Designer Fashion Fund. She also recently showed off her latest collaboration with Adidas Originals.
Bonner is headlining what is the 16th installment of MoMA’s Artist’s Choice series. Her focus will be on artworks that highlight Black cultural and aesthetic practices inspired by the styles, experiences, forms and sounds of the African diaspora. In keeping the concept of “Spirit Movers,” Wales Bonner aims to relay multiple histories, prompt contemplation and conjure up new connections between people and places. Her selections will include works from Terry Adkins, Moustapha Dimé, Agnes Martin, Man Ray, Betye Saar and David Hammons.
Wales Bonner is organizing “Spirit Movers” with Michelle Kuo, the Marlene Hess curator, and Dana Liljegren, curatorial assistant in the department of painting and sculpture.
Wales Bonner has spent years researching the collections at MoMA. Her choices touch upon musicality, storytelling and cultural narratives. Terry Adkins’s “Last Trumpet (1995),” for example, is a sculptural composite of varying wind instruments, highlighting sound, performance and elegy. David Hammons’ “Afro Asian Eclipse (or Black China) (1978),” which will be on view for the first time at MoMA, combines a makeshift scroll with geometric patterns formed from tufts of hair that the artist retrieved from barbershop floors. The work references the Duke Ellington album The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971) and emphasizes intersections between Afro-Atlantic and Afro-Pacific cultures.
There are also plans for MoMA to publish a companion book for the exhibition entitled “Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm — Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection,” that has been assembled by Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression” that combines poetry and imagery.