Rashaad Newsome*

Lot #54
Wisdom Body, 2019
Digital inkjet print
19 x 27 inches
AP 5 
Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

About the Artwork

Using diasporic traditions of improvisation, Rashaad Newsome's (Headlands Artist in Residence ‘14) work pulls from the world of advertising, the internet, Art History, and Black and Queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that walks the tightrope between creative computing, social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. Wisdom Body was created for the Wu-Tang Clan's 26th anniversary print edition; it stands as a refutation of the 1995 Ghostface Killah and Raekwon song of the same name. The figure is self-possessed, beholding its own beauty; the objects of consumption that make up their body form an allegory for the consumption of marginalized genders, replete in the song's lyrics. The work reclaims co-opted aesthetic practices associated with the diaspora, and calls attention to people engaged in radical forms of resistance who are often overlooked. Newsome exhibits and performs in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals around the world, and his work is in numerous public and private collections.

Retail Value: $2,500