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In his latest show at Clementine Gallery, Robert Pruitt leaves all traces of bling behind. Foregoing rhinestones for conté crayons and handguns for butcher paper, Pruitt chooses the appropriately quieter path of drawing for his exploration of African-American secrets. The secrets appear in the form of traditional African garments worn by Pruitt’s models (friends from his neighborhood, Houston’s Third Ward) and the ritual objects of an African-American slave heritage. But, true to his word, Pruitt’s secrets are “quiet as kept,” as the show’s six life-size drawings and two sculptures succeed in referencing a range of African-American historical and cultural practices without ever divulging their meanings. |
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Robert Pruitt: Quiet As Kept – Jillian Steinhauer
In his latest show at Clementine Gallery, Robert Pruitt leaves all traces of bling behind. Foregoing rhinestones for conté crayons and handguns for butcher paper, Pruitt chooses the appropriately quieter path of drawing for his exploration of African-American secrets.
The secrets appear in the form of traditional African garments worn by Pruitt’s models (friends from his neighborhood, Houston’s Third Ward) and the ritual objects of an African-American slave heritage. But, true to his word, Pruitt’s secrets are “quiet as kept,” as the show’s six life-size drawings and two sculptures succeed in referencing a range of African-American historical and cultural practices without ever divulging their meanings. Viewers are left to their own devices as they ponder the origins and purposes of Pruitt’s African robes, masks and statues.
It was not without a certain amount of self-satisfaction, then, that I lauded myself as a student of African art and recognized the shards of pottery placed carefully inside a slave bible as a reference to the Kongo people’s “minkisi”—charms made to summon the spirits. I assume though, and I daresay Pruitt does as well, that such insights are not quite classified as common knowledge. The works in this show rely on their audience’s superficial judgments that something looks or is African just as heavily as they rely on the audience’s knowledge to do nothing more than scratch the surface. In Pruitt’s domain, African objects function almost entirely on a metaphorical level: a traditional statue puts the “African” in “African-American,” while jean jackets and Nike shoes contribute the “American” half of the equation, resulting in a clever, if simplistic, artistic rendering of the notion of double consciousness.
In Sandinista, for example, a young male figure stares out at us with an aggressive look in his eyes. The gleaming white shells and the straw-like fabric of his dress posit that garment in contrast with the rest of his outfit, which consists of a contemporary hat, a red t-shirt worn over his face and a pair of brightly colored Nike sneakers. A gun rests on the ground in front of him, not directly at his feet but close enough for him to bend down and grab it in an instant.
With his mouth covered, the Sandinista’s clothing and accessories speak for him, combining a slew of cultural associations into one complex identity. What’s more, he stands ready to defend this identity, notably from the viewer, with his glance-over-the-shoulder/watch-your-back posture and his gun at arm’s length. Pruitt has succeeded in creating a figure so empowered by cultural secrets that it seems ready to step off the page and defend the African-American community that the artist cites as “naked,” due to the constant “giving away [of] cultural productions and idioms.”
Only one complication: not all of the works in “Quiet As Kept” adhere so faithfully to this program of celebration and empowerment. In particular, the drawing Lauren (Waiting), hanging adjacent to Sandinista, made me wonder whether the show succeeds singularly as a celebration, rather than simply as an exploration, of the power of black secrets. Like the Sandinista, the portrait of Lauren uses clothing and accessories to conjoin the old and new, historical and contemporary African-American experiences. The difference lies in the way the two figures interact with their respective historical accouterments: whereas the Sandinista’s dress functions for him as an article of clothing and may even provide him with spiritual help, Lauren must balance a basket of bricks on her head while wearing a weighty, beaded African cloth over her face. In effect, she is stuck, burdened by an inability to see and bricks that will fall if she moves. She sits waiting to be liberated from these remnants of her ancestors, these cultural secrets that keep her chair-bound. In this condition, the large bracelets on her wrists come to resemble shackles, and the message of the drawing feels light years away from the Sandinista piece’s staunch pride in the African-American experience.
Other works in the show present their figures similarly burdened by these cultural hand-me-downs in one way or another, until an ambiguity begins to creep its way into “Quiet As Kept.” Leaving the gallery, I couldn’t help but ponder the question that has eternally plagued the keeping of secrets—that is, do we ultimately count it a privilege or a burden?
