Jimmie Durham: God’s Children, God’s Poems

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Artist, performer, poet, essayist, and activist Jimmie Durham (b. 1940, Washington, Arkansas) is one of the most influential voices of the contemporary art world, reflecting on the complex and problematic encounters between the human being, technology, and nature from different cultural perspectives. His oeuvre spans sculpture, drawing, collage, printmaking, painting, photography, video, performance, and poetry, demonstrating remarkable attention to form and the specificity of material choices. Durham became internationally famous in the 1980s for his sculptures made from materials such as wood, stone, and the bones and skulls of animals, with which he frequently embodies the incorporation of Native American elements into contemporary art, thus breaking down standardized visual languages and discourses.

This monographic publication accompanies his exhibition God’s Children, God’s Poem at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and has been conceived in close collaboration with the artist. Featuring an extensive text by Jimmie Durham, and with contributions by the curator and art historian of the Cree Indians Heritage Richard William W. Hill, and the Migros Museum Director Heike Munder, the book contextualizes the exhibition within the larger body of Durham’s artistic practice, which is a continuous examination of social and political topics. The issue of the representation of civilizing values, historicity, and social identity are also of central importance in his works.

Jimmie Durham lives and works in Berlin and Naples. His works have been presented in numerous exhibitions around the world, most recently, for instance, at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles (2017), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2014, 2003, 1993), the Venice Biennale (2015, 2005, 2003, 2001, 1999), the Museo Madre, Naples (2013, 2008), in documenta in Kassel (2012, 1992), the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), and the musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2009).

Published with the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.