Cameron A. Granger: 9999

  • Dimly lit gallery with black walls features dramatically lit artworks, including 4 vertically hung black and white works on paper, 1 box-like sculpture, and 1 large film screening
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • Film screening of black and white footage of a highway that has a black gaping hole in the middle of it. The film is suspended above the Panorama, a large-scale miniature model of NYC.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • Film screening in dimly lit gallery. On screen is a Black man, kneeling within an enclosed green field. Surrounding him is red and white striped circus-like architecture.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • Dimly lit gallery features dramatically spotlit wooden desk with a stack of books and VHS tapes, a 4:3 computer monitor featuring footage of a Black femme in an interior space, and a black keyboard with a black cast silicone hand.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • Install view of 3 black works on paper dramatically lit against a black gallery wall. The 3 pieces feature silvery crossword puzzles. Below each is a walnut shelf featuring knicknacks.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • A vertical shot of a box crate sculpture in the middle of a dimly lit room. The box is lifted by numerous black hands, and also features a hooded black body trying to emerge. The person is holding onto a sword that has been thrust into the box.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • A vertical shot of a black work on paper against a black gallery wall. The work features 3 reproduction black and white photographs of a black man practicing magic. The photographs are almost floating. The background of the work is a silvery distorted skull pattern.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.
  • a horizontal view of a crate box sculpture with a black figure emerging. The sculpture is brightly lit in a dim gallery. Behind it on a white wall is the black vinyl exhibition wall text about the show. It's 4 columns long.
    Installation view, “Cameron A. Granger: 9999” (May 19, 2024-January 19, 2025). Photo courtesy Queens Museum, credit Hai Zhang.

I curated Cameron A. Granger’s first institutional solo show, 9999. Granger was an In Situ fellow at the Queens Museum, a fellowship that employed artists as full-time staff members whose job was to be an artist. Granger and two other fellows received benefits, free studio space, production budget, and a culminating exhibition. This radical program catalyzed experimentation with new materials, forms, ways of thinking, and scale, especially evident in the expansion of Granger’s practice during his time at the museum.

Granger’s exhibition builds a narrative using speculative fiction to reimagine segregative urban design as a magic spell cast on Black communities. Through sculpture, works on paper, and film, Granger looks to histories of Black magicians, spiritual knowledge, and video game iconography to break free.

To support Granger’s exhibition, I wrote exhibition didactics, coordinated three public programs, taught In Situ artists how to conduct virtual visual description tours of their exhibitions, and administratively supported Granger’s petition to film in a NYC parks construction site. Granger and I also did a joint discussion off-site at Asian Art Archives in America, reflecting on his speculative framework and expanding out to Black/Asian solidarities.

Didactics
Intro text
Wall labels

Select press coverage
BOMB Magazine: Movements
Hyperallergic: The Crossword Grid’s Geometry of Memory
Ocula Magazine: 7 New York Shows to See during Armory and into Autumn
Hyperallergic: Fall Art Guide

Artist + curator conversation

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