Abigail DeVille’s exhibition, aptly titled ‘Bronx Heavens’, begins by offering visitors an invitation to come aboard Lunar capsule (all works cited, 2022). the eccentric Mork and Mindy-a stylish spaceship, with its gilded interior and Rococoesque chair -a piece of furniture that evokes an elder’s living room, where family history is often passed down -has traveled to many cultural events and festivals, collecting stories of people of all ages who now become valuable records of daily life on Earth.
A voice-activated microphone inside Lunar capsule captures our stories, which are ultimately broadcast via a media player connected to the headphones of a separate work, black monolith, a telephone booth-like object that glows with blue and purple lights. A direct refutation of the idea of a singular experience of Darkness, Monolith works like the reverse of Adrian Piper What is it, what is it #31991, a rectangular white cube containing a series of videos in which a black man clearly states, among other things, that he is “not careless”, “not childish” and “not mean” in order to challenge any stereotypical idea that the white and presumably liberal museum audiences might have on blacks.
An otherworldly blue glow pervades the exhibit, representing the universe. Outer space has been a prominent theme in DeVille’s work since 2008. Take door to the cosmos, a pyramid of repurposed televisions that play video loops of old films made by Bronx residents. (The artist, who works in the borough, was also born and raised there—his deep affection for this part of New York and for the city as a whole is absolutely evident throughout this exhibit.) DeVille even reorients Gotham’s origin myths in its sculpting Halving Maen, a salty reconfiguration of the eponymous ship on which the English explorer Henry Hudson sailed. The ship traveled on the river – the one he probably died in or around – which now bears his name. The object, reminiscent of a precarious-looking draft horse, is twisted in damaged clothing and a tangled American flag, all topped with a fiberglass effigy of a deer’s head. The work is a funny but dark meditation on colonial rapacity and the brutal histories of ancient regimes, but it is also a monument to a better future forged by someone who wants to build a brighter and more expansive future. Ascent (meditation), a stratospheric installation made up of masonite panels painted in shades of violet-blue and punctuated with salvaged bits of household fixtures – windows, a screen door – seem to somehow reflect the light bouncing off the ancient seabed (which can now be seen up close, thanks to recent advances in imaging technology). Or maybe the artwork is a rendering of an older, moribund version of our galaxy.
In many ways, “Bronx Heavens” functions as an open source archive that honors and energizes the lives of those who occupy the titular borough, including family members, scholars and other artists who energized the DeVille’s existence for decades. Her show takes the idea of going “uptown” as a way to enter a divine realm, but grounded and nurtured by the events of everyday life.
While New York offers us many exhibitions of black artists with works that seem to draw inspiration from the southern United States or the Caribbean, it is refreshing to discover art that channels the joy and curiosity of living in a place which could only be voiced by a lovingly devoted “city kid”. Whether one considers the multiple generations of black families from the South who moved to the Bronx in waves during the Great Migration or the immigrants from around the world who still arrive in the borough today, one wonders what constitutes these roots, considering how they were dragged across the sea and continue to slide across the universe. For some viewers, DeVille’s exhibit could be a metaphor for the Bronx itself, a place that belongs to a myriad of interconnected systems that may only be in sight now, like the light from exploding stars a long time ago. eons.
