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Fred Wilson in "Structures"
Fred Wilson blurs the line between art and curating by designing a museum exhibition space in Sweden that reorients archeological pieces to create new contextual meanings. “I would like to think that objects have memories, and that we have memories about certain objects,” he says. “A lot of what I do is eliciting memory from an object.”
Mounting tear-shaped black glass drips on a white wall, and later creating prints of black spots, Wilson reflects on how he was ostracized as the only Black child in his elementary school. “A lot of my project is trying to understand the visual world around me,” he says. “That’s the basis for a lot of what I do—it’s really where that pain comes from.”
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Appropriating curatorial methods and strategies, Fred Wilson creates new contexts for the display of art and artifacts found in museum collections, along with wall labels, sound, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects. His sculptures and installations lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning, and thereby shape interpretations of historical truth and artistic value.
“A lot of my project is trying to understand the visual world around me… What is me, and what is something that the rest of the world has said I am?”
Fred Wilson