Richard Hart: The Shape of Absence
June 14 - August 11, 2017

The Shape of Absence was a solo exhibition of works by then Artist in Residence Richard Hart. The exhibition was a meditation on the longing for home, transculturalism, migration, and how these elements sculpted a sense of one’s individual cultural identity. Drawing from his own emigration from South Africa to the United States; Hart addressed a sense of nostalgia through a reconstitution of material culture. This exhibition was an exercise in creating both a narrative and a dialogue around the idea of memory, loss, and reconfiguration of identity based on a plurality of multi-geographical experiences.

Hart’s interest lied in the individual and emotional aspects of cross cultural existences. How were identities adapted, revised, and re-presented based on cultural memory and geography? How were these reconfigured personas articulated through material objects? And how were these objects imbued with new meaning based on a reoriented sense of belonging within a new geography? These were some of the queries which Hart addressed in The Shape of Absence. He developed a design vernacular that was loosely reminiscent of textile patterning. Incorporating barely visible text, this language felt amorphously spiritual or ritualistic, without being rooted in any one culture.

Much of the material for the exhibition came from Hart’s archive of images, objects, experiences, and memories from South Africa, combined with similar fodder from his life in the United States. Longing (2017), was a large-scale painting set against a dizzying backdrop of graphic wallpaper and accompanied by a video piece that is its source material and an installation of hanging white clay orbs (ingested in South Africa as a traditional cleanser). These works spoke to this ambiguity and pliability of both memory and cultural identity. Longing’s accompanying installation was an example of how the artist incorporated objects and artifacts that have cultural significance in his own life to create a ‘shape of memory.’ Another large multimedia piece incorporated field recordings from the artist’s home town of Durban.

The exhibition’s namesake piece, The Shape of Absence (2017), was a collection of objects and ephemera loaned to the artist from friends, families, and members of the African diasporic community in the Newark/New York area. These objects had been designated as talismans or reminders of ‘home’- cultural heritage- by each of their owners. Each item was accompanied by a note explaining its significance to its owner.

An important aspect of The Shape of Absence was not only the celebration of one’s own relationship to cultural pluralism; but also, the invitation for the audience to experience this sense of multidimensional identity. The participatory component of this exhibition was intended to cultivate larger dialogue about how people identify themselves both within and beyond the boundaries of geography, heritage, history, and culture.

About the Artist
Richard Hart creates work that takes as its departure point ideas of ritual, magic, and spirituality. Through painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography he spins a vision of Africa that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, memory and intuition. In 2013, the artist moved from Durban to New York City, where he currently lives with his family.