New Art at GCMoA ▽

This large-scale diptych takes its title from the 1975 Parliament album of the same name. The record is one of the first to explore George Clinton's P-Funk mythology, in which he envisions a celestial, Space-Age-inspired realm of resiliency and enlightenment for African Americans. In the title track of the album, Clinton introduces himself as the Mothership connection, bringing forth an environment of funk and dance. Parliament's Mothership Connection has since become a cornerstone of Afrofuturism, an aesthetic and philosophy that marks the intersection of the African diaspora with technology. 

Villalongo's Mothership Connection presents two images: at left, the silhouette of a slave ship, derived from a well-known print created in 1787; at right, a disembodied figure both emerging from and diving into the darkness. Meteorites, minerals, and rock crystals are interspersed with African statuary and masks, objects that are markers of the primordial, spiritual, ritual, and cultural, and also currency in the trade and trafficking of resources, commodities, and black bodies. The celestial and earthly are bound together through the imagery of historical violence and its repercussions in the present. Referencing scholar Christina Sharpe's In the Wake, the slave vessel recalls the tragic history of the Middle Passage for enslaved Africans and its mark — or the "wake" of these voyages — on the contemporary African diaspora. In particular, Villalongo highlights not just the systemic racism and trauma resulting from slavery but how this experience informs his own African American cultural traditions, remembrance, and ancestry. 

WILLIAM VILLALONGO (b. 1975, Hollywood, Florida) was raised in Bridgeton, New Jersey, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union School of Art, NYC, and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is a past recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. In 2021 he was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize, sponsored by the American Academy in Rome, and will be in residence at the Academy through August 2022.