#TBT | Jamaica Biennial 2014 |Renee Cox, Sacred Geometry

The Jamaica Biennial 2014 exhibition comprised a juried section, which is open to all artists living in Jamaica and Jamaican artists and artists of immediate descent living elsewhere, and an invited section, which includes artists with a well-established record of exhibitions and critical response. In a departure from its previous, national focus and a first major step towards internationalizing the Biennial, a select number of international artists had also been invited to contribute special projects, namely Simon Fujiwara (UK/Japan), Renee Cox (Jamaica/USA), Richard Mark Rawlins (Trinidad), Sheena Rose (Barbados), Blue Curry (Bahamas/UK) and James Cooper (Bermuda). For the first time, also the Biennial is operating from more than one venue. 

One of those venues was National Gallery West and the artist featured at the western branch of National Gallery of Jamaica was Renee Cox. Featured, was a series of photographs and a video by Renee Cox, titled Sacred Geometry, and shown as part of the 2014 Jamaica Biennial. Renee Cox is a New York-based photographer and mixed media artist who is known for her seminal and at times controversial presentation of Afrofuturistic photography to the art world. She has also worked as a fashion photographer in Paris and New York.

The Jamaica Biennial 2014 featured a selection from Cox’s  Sacred Geometry series, which consists of digitally manipulated black and white portraits that display self-similar patterns. They are executed with precision, creating sculptural kaleidoscopes of the human body while exploring the power of symbols as elements of collective imagination. The inspiration for Cox’s work comes from fractals, a mathematical concept centuries old and used by many ancient African cultures. Sacred Geometry has also been the result of Cox’s embrace of the digital world. Bridging the gap between the old and new technology has brought on new challenges and endless possibilities.

Read more by clicking the link: /https://nationalgallerywest.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/renee-cox-sacred-geometry/

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Renee Cox – Sacred Geometry

Renee Cox – from the Sacred Geometry series

National Gallery West is featuring a new series of photographs and a video by Renee Cox, titled Sacred Geometry, and shown as part of the 2014 Jamaica Biennial.

Renee Cox is a New York-based photographer and mixed media artist who is known for her seminal and at times controversial presentation of Afrofuturistic photography to the art world. She has also worked as a fashion photographer in Paris and New York.

Cox was born in Jamaica and moved to New York where she received a degree in Film Studies at Syracuse University. She has been featured in many museum exhibitions including the Spelman Museum of Fine Art (2013), the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art (2008), the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke (2006), the Brooklyn Museum (2001), the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston (1996), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1993), to name a few. Cox’s work was recently featured in the book and exhibition Pictures from Paradise: A Survey of Contemporary Carribean Photography, the exhibition as part of the Contact Photography Festival 2014 in Toronto, Canada.

Renee Cox at the opening of Sacred Geometry, December 12, 2014, National Gallery West

Finding the inspiration for her work from her own life experiences, Renee Cox has used her own body in her photographs to represent her criticisms of society and to celebrate and empower women. Arguably her best known work is Yo Mama’s Last Supper, in which she recreated Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper by featuring her nude self, sitting in for Jesus Christ and surrounded by all black disciples. When shown at the Brooklyn Museum in 2001, Yo Mama’s Last Supper incurred the wrath of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and religious leaders in New York City but the work is now regarded as a classic example of contemporary photography and it has been referenced in scholarly publications and lectures around the world.