Collection Visit: Marilyn Nance

Trained in film and photography, Nance creates works that investigate and celebrate African and African-American history and life. In November 2016, she presented work documenting the Festac ‘77 festival in Nigeria during a panel discussion at the “Black Portraiture[s] III: Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures” conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. We visited Nance in her studio in October 2016 and invited her to visit the Studio Museum’s permanent collection to respond to three works we felt related to her practice, whether conceptually or formally: Sam Gilliam’s Tapestry 1 (1992–93), Sadie Barnette’s Untitled (2014) and Lorraine O’Grady’s Sisters ( from the Miscegenated Family Album) (1994).

Primarily known for her photography of African-American and African diasporic life, Marilyn Nance is a visual storyteller who has been known to celebrate life and death as equal aspects of the human condition. Meditating on the quotidian and the spiritual, Nance connects space and time by juxtaposing and repeating photographic images, in turn often presenting seemingly disparate moments as diptychs and triptychs. The ability to combine linear storytelling with nonlinear visuals initially inspired Nance's embrace and use of the medium. Her Black-and-white photographs observe and capture the nuances of humanity, both exploring how people relate to one another while highlighting the ability of the body to exist in multiple spaces and times at once.

Nance's first trip out of the United States, to Lagos, Nigeria, at age 23 for Festac ’77, was infused with her own experience of working to understand family lineages and human connections. Recalling the feeling that she could have been related to every person she met while abroad, she casually notes during our visit how a recent genetic test allowed her to trace a portion of her lineage back to Nigeria. She states, “I have family everywhere that I go . . . a cousin here and another one there—I recently found out through Facebook and Ancestry.com that I have relatives in South Africa . . .”

Recently, Nance has found herself returning to the work she made while at Festac ’77, where she was assigned the position of photographer for the North American Zone. Also known as the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, Festac ’77 took place in Lagos, Nigeria and at the time was recognized as the largest cultural event held on the African continent. The month-long gathering of more than 17,000 attendees from 50 countries was promoted as the largest migration of African Americans from the United States to Africa—representing for many a symbolical reversal of the transatlantic slave trade.¹ It was attended by more than 400 African-American artists, writers and performers. Using her documentation of this event as a departure point for new works that incorporate collage and quilt making, Nance notes that both practices have long played a major role in her immediate family’s narrative in New York and Alabama. We sat at a table in her studio, a space filled with photographs, fabrics and other ephemera, discussing her time in residence at the Studio Museum, as well as how her travels to New Orleans, Nigeria, Brazil and beyond have continued to influence her work as a photographer. Looking through several archival boxes containing the photographs she created during Festac ’77, Nance shares that her new collage series, created with artist Rafia Santana, would celebrate artists such as Valerie Maynard, Sun Ra and Ademola Olugebefola, who participated in the events during the festival and who are today represented in the Studio Museum’s permanent collection.

In From the Studio: Artists in Residence 1993–94, Nance presented an installation entitled Egungun Work (1994), which recalls an Egungun festival she attended in 1981 while photographing the Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon, South Carolina. Stemming from the Yoruba cultural traditions of West Africa, the Egungun serve as the members of the community that have been gifted the responsibility of venerating and contacting the spirits of important ancestors on special occasions. From her expansive documentation of African spirituality in the United States, Nance constantly finds herself considering her ancestors. The photographs of gatherings in her installation are reconfigured to employ new signifying entities; the visual articulation of the Egungun’s message indicates remembrance, honor, celebration, release and mourning. Through her incorporation of banners, church fans and pews, she actively claims agency as the catalyst to the collective narrative. In her studio, we discussed how the presentation of her contact sheets and magnifying glasses, both elements of her installation, worked to invite viewers to interpret and edit her work. She recalls two elder women who came to see the exhibition and their discussion of the works they felt she should have printed for larger display. Her observation of this interaction sheds light on her interest in the construction of communal family albums, which empower the collective to unpack ancestral wisdoms while reimagining themselves in relation to the history of the Black body in photographic imagery.

1. Babasehinde Augustine Ademuleya and Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe, “Pan-Africanism and the Black Festivals of Arts and Culture: Today’s Realities and Expectations,” IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science 20 (2015): 24.