Terry Adkins (MFA Professor) in exhibition at P.S. 1, NYC

NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith

On view October 19, 2008 - January 26, 2009

From the exhibition press release: "Including some 50 works of sculpture, photography, assemblage, video, performance, and other media, NeoHooDoo asserts that the drive towards a spiritual practice is as relevant today in our burgeoning global society as it has ever been. Artists have long engaged with ritualism to enrich their work, drawing on the traditions of shamans, griots, and oral historians. NeoHooDoo 'grew out of a desire to explore the multiple meanings of spirituality in contemporary art,' states P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor and Menil Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Franklin Sirmans.

In the late 1960s poet Ishmael Reed adopted the 19th-century term 'HooDoo,' referring to forms of religion and their practice in the New World to explore the idea of spiritual practice outside easily definable faiths or creeds and ritualism on contemporary works of literature and art. 'Neo-HooDoo,' he writes in his 1972 collection of poetry, Conjure, 'believes that every man is an artist and every artist a priest.' ... For these artists, ritual practice often emerges as a form of catharsis and political critique to approach issues such as race, gender, slavery, and colonization."

For more information on the exhibition see: http://www.ps1.org/exhibitions/view/205/