NYAB Event - Crystal Z Campbell Exhibition

Crystal Z Campbell Exhibition

Cindy Rucker Gallery

This event has ended.

Cindy Rucker Gallery presents Crystal Z Campbell in her first solo exhibition in New York. Campbellʼs work often investigates conflicting narratives and moments of confusion, which to her are ways of denying the viewer a clear interpretation of failed or traumatic historical moments.

In this exhibition, Campbell introduces many of us to Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her genetic sample taken for initial tests on her cancer lives on as HeLa cells, the first human cells to be grown in a lab. Her unique DNA has been generated over and over, has been involved in 11,000 patents, including the polio vaccine, and launched a multi-billion dollar industry of selling human biological materials, all unbeknownst to Henrietta Lackʼs family.

Driven by Henrietta Lacksʼ narrative, I Live to Fight (No More) Forever is a series of mixed media works made partly in collaboration with scientists at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Grown on diamonds, the HeLa cells act as portraiture instead of medium. Campbell manipulates photographs of this imagery with paint, markers, pen and colored pencil. The work offers a different approach to the deconstructed female than the canonical male artists of the 20th century, substituting the male gaze for the scientific gaze.

Campbellʼs piece, Sankofa (Go Back and Fetch It), 2013 presents a video loop of the cells on diamonds, a visual proposition of the value of forever. Taken from the Akan language of Ghana, sankofa is associated with the proverb “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” Seen through a triangular lens, Campbell focuses on the spiritual aspect of having a microscopic part of you live on forever. As Campbell explores her subject as a person never identified as such, she never tries to undermine the medical advancements these cells provided nor the complete omission of the participation of Lacksʼ family.

Crystal Z Campbell (b. 1980, Prince Georgeʼs County, MD) attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, received an MA in Africana Studies from the University at Albany and an MFA from the University of California San Diego. Her work has been exhibited at ICA-Philadelphia, Fondazione Ratti, Studio Museum in
Harlem, New Childrenʼs Museum of San Diego, Wave Hill Garden and Cultural Center, Project Row Houses, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Harvestworks
and de Appel Arts Centre among others. In 2014, Campbell will be a Sommerakademie fellow at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland. Campbell was a Van Lier Fellow at the Whitney Museum of Artʼs Independent Study Program and recently finished a two-year residentcy at the Rijkakademie van beeldente kunsten in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands where she currently lives and works.

[Image: Sankofa (Go Back and Fetch It), 2013. Silent Digital Video (2:00 Minute Loop)]