Art Gallery of Ontario hosts contemporary hip-hop art exhibition
December 8, 2024
How can we represent contemporary art intersecting with hip-hop through a Canadian lens?
Curator Dr. Julie Crooks and her team had to consider the question when the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) was presented with the opportunity of hosting ‘The Culture: Hip-Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century’.
The exhibit is grounded in the origin of the music genre in the United States, with a focus on art and music for the last two decades.
Crooks ensured that some elements of Canada’s hip-hop culture are part of the exhibition.
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“The show is very global in terms of the artists that are represented, but the only Canadian artist is Stan Douglas (in the original exhibition),” she said at the exhibition’s media launch on December 4. “I felt the show could not come to Toronto and not represent Toronto which has a deep relationship and history with hip-hop. To be not represented in this show would be disingenuous and simply not right. We had to think about how we do that while respecting the show's vision.”
Douglas is among the nearly 65 artists featured in the exhibit that brings together contemporary artists, musicians, designers and stylists to tell the story of the art form and its global impact on visual culture.
While a fan of hip-hop, Crooks made it clear she is not an expert on the popular music genre.
“It was important to talk to people which is what I love about curating,” noted the 2014-16 Rebanks Postdoctoral Fellow who co-founded the Black Artists Network Dialogue (BAND) with maxine bailey, Karen Carter and Karen Tyrell in 2009. “It is a collaborative venture. It is about reaching out to communities. There is a special moment in the show that some people in this room participated in and I think that brings together the essence of not only the show, but the power and history of hip-hop in Toronto.”
Some of the people Crooks reached out to included hip-hop educator Dr. Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert and photographers Ajani Charles and Patrick Nichols.
“I also have relationships with people like Master T (Tony Young) and a range of other individuals,” she added. “…If I was organizing a show like this from Toronto, there are a range of scholars like Mark Campbell, Dalton Higgins and Francesca, influencers and radio personalities that we would gather around the table to try to figure out how best to do this in as much the same way as ‘The Culture’ curatorial team did. You can’t do a show like this on your own. You need the experts when you are doing a show like this of a complicated and political genre that has changed over the 50 years of its existence.”
Andrea Purnell (l), Dr. Julie Crooks & Master T (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Co-curator Andrea Purnell said the four-member team engaged in extensive outreach and collaboration.
“It was important for us to be as genuine as possible, thinking about the grassroots of hip-hop,” said the St. Louis Art Museum Audience Development Manager. “Because of that, we talked to as many people as we could. We formed a global advisory group that comprised fashion designers, people in hip-hop and other curators. We are building off their story of hip-hop. This is not the first hip-hop exhibition. We talked to the others to tell us how it happened, what went well and what didn’t.
“Once we got in a room and said this is our idea, then we decided – even with the checklist – to make sure we spoke to as many of the artists as we could to tell us how this work is hip-hop what hip-hop means to them. Some of the artists said ‘I know you are looking at this work and I know you are interested in the show, but actually I have grown up a bit and hip-hop has influenced my practice in this way and I want to make something new for you’. They got so excited. We had so many artists make brand-new work when they heard about the premise of the show that we thought we might be on to something.”
Organized by the St. Louis and Baltimore Art Museums, the exhibition highlights the art form’s ongoing conceptual and material innovation.
Placing fashion, consumer marketing, music, videos and objects in dialogue with paintings, sculpture, poetry, photography and multi-media installations, it considers activism and racial identity, notions of blind swagger as well as gender, sexuality and feminism.
“This multidisciplinary exhibition probably tells you most that hip-hop can’t be boxed in,” said Purnell who is also an Actor, Writer, Director and Stage Manager with the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. “There is no one way to get to hip-hop. It has truly influenced contemporary art which is what the show is all about. The ways in which that comes to life in the wigs that Lil Kim wore along with the grills and gold chains. All of this is paying homage to this limitless art form.”
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‘The Culture’ explores a series of themes, emphasizing pressing issues in the hip-hop industry such as the complex relationship between capitalism, commodification, and racial identity; hip-hop culture’s connection to gender, sexuality, feminism, appropriation, and misogyny as well as hip hop’s relationship to the art world and the art market.
“We are talking about adornment, tradition, origin and how hip-hop all came to be,” Purnell pointed out. “But there is a quiet moment in the show called ‘Ascension’ where it is a reflection. It is a moment to stop and pause and think about those we have lost and those who are still here and are dealing with difficult situations. It takes you into the cognitive space of hip-hop. It makes us think about the mental health of not only hip-hop artists, but those that are listening to the music. That is a space that is not touched on enough.”
What did she learn about hip-hop while curating the exhibit?
“How many lives have been touched by this art form,” was Purnell’s response. “I have had the pleasure of being along this journey, stopping along the way in each space that the show has been represented. I am forever amazed at how impactful hip-hop has been for the young and the not-so-young. It is colourless, ageless and classless.”
She and three other curators -- Baltimore Museum of Art Director Asma Naeem, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Chief Education & Community Engagement Officer Gamynne Guillotte and St. Louis Art Museum Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art Hannah Klemn -- put together the exhibition to illuminate the depth of hip-hop’s influence.
The first name they came up with for the exhibition was ‘All Eyez On Me’ that was the title of the late Tupac last studio album released before his death.
While endorsing the exhibit, Tupac’s estate kindly requested that the Co-curators seek another title.
“We went back to the drawing board,” Purnell said. “As a team, we were always thinking about community and how important community is to hip-hop and how this all came to be with a Block Party in the Bronx and all of that. It was about the culture of hip-hop from the B-Boys and B-Girls to the dancing and fashion that is truly the tradition and everything that makes up the art form. That is how we landed on the name ‘The Culture’, but the origin was quite different.”
The exhibit was launched last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of hip-hop’s emergence.
“We knew that this needed to be celebrated,” noted Purnell. “But we had no idea it could be this.”
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Having four women curate the exhibit, said Master T who moderated the media launch, is a positive spin artistically on hip-hop.
“I think this is a different look,” said the X-Tendamix creator who interviewed some of hip-hop’s leading personalities, including Snoop Dogg, Master P and Tupac just days before he died in 1996. “We have been locked into seeing the five elements –MCing, DJing, Breakdance, Graffiti & Knowledge. This probably fits into the Knowledge category on an artistic level.”
He also lauded Crooks for her role in bringing the exhibition to Canada’s largest city.
In June 2017, she was added to the AGO’s ranks of internationally recognized scholars as part of the museum’s strategy to strengthen its role as a leader in art scholarship across a multitude of areas while generating a greater number of collection-based exhibitions and programs for audiences in Toronto and across the globe.
“Julie made sure that some of Toronto would be highlighted in this exhibition which is commendable,” Master T added.
On view on Level 5 of the AGO, the exhibition of more than 100 artworks and objects is set to an original ambient soundscape by producer and scholar Wendel Patrick.
‘The Culture’ is also accompanied by a 308-page catalogue on sale at the AGO for $79.
The exhibition runs from January 7 to April 6, 2025.
