A “toy-etic” reflection on parallel trauma

We designed the exhibition architecture for Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston, a pivotal exhibition at The Jewish Museum in New York City. The exhibit brings together the works of two artists from different generations: one Black and one Jewish, both building on their interest in comics and satire to critique White supremacy in the United States, its impact on their communities and—at times—their own complicity in its embedded mechanisms. The exhibition architecture builds on Hancock’s shed, which itself references a poignant work by Guston reflecting on his father’s suicide. The gallery is turned into a fairground environment comprising similar playful cubic pavilions, or toys, that emanate and rotate out from a centrifugal circular form. The inside of the central cylinder is an inverted cone—a comically enlarged Ku Klux Klan hood turned upside down. Projected on its interior surface are idyllic scenes from the State Fair in Paris, TX, which are interrupted by traumatic images of historical lynchings that also took place in that same context.

Artwork: © Trenton Doyle Hancock. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.
Artwork copyright The Estate of Philip Guston, The Guston Foundation.