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A Traveling Exhibition: Curated by Daniel Strong, Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions, Grinnell College Museum of Art

Current viewing_room
  • William Villalongo

    Myths and Migrations

  • Artist's Statement

    Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked to express the absurdity, beauty and vulnerability of black presence against the backdrop of race. The works become portals or navigational devices for thinking about the mystery within human experience through the poetics of history, myth and satire.

     

    My earlier work is highly narrative and episodic. Myth and satire became a way to speak about the poles between fiction and reality that accompany perceptions of black people and the relative absence and presence of the black image in the Western historical context. Myths for better and for worse allow us to see the unimaginable or the not yet imagined. The history of race fiction is a lesson in how this poetic can be misused. I find myself compelled towards such problematic spaces to turn them into places of invention and inquiry. This is true of many cultures in which myth is a catalyst for healing and connecting to deep time. I feel the treachery of the imagination can also coalesce into images of beauty and resilience.

     

    In recent work, I am transplanting the inherent and persistent fragility that surrounds black life within the symbolic languages of healing, power, metamorphic and geologic transformation. The works are embedded with images of crystals, meteorites, butterflies and African sculpture. I believe this speaks to notions of liberation and remembrance in the afterlives of extraction and migration. These ideas play out across the relationships and gaps between figure and body as subject and object. The cut and collage become methodologies for transferring these ideas into material. To cut and paste over and under, to cut and see through, to cut and back up, to cut and paint in and on is to enact on real material the felt experience of moving though the world in a racialized body with a hope that it conveys something of the precarity of life itself and how we are all implicated in the struggles of others. This is not about pain. It’s about love. It’s about recognizing that we are more than flesh, that we hold and release time and histories.

     

    In all, my work is concerned with stories and images of time and change in the arch of inhumanity to humanity that has marked the black experience. This is my subject and my study as an artist. I often work in series and I look for frameworks to make these concerns visible. A figure, a still life, a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are vessels for information and sites to produce meaning. My work is informed by humor, urgent emotion, ephemeral visions, current events, black critical theory, western and not-western symbolisms in culture and art. I want to create sites of contemplation and wonder.

     

    - William Villlalongo, 2020

  • WILLIAM VILLALONGO MYTHS AND MIGRATIONS Catalogue Contributors Tiffany E. Barber, PhD Assistant Professor, Africana Studies and Art History, University of...

     

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO

    MYTHS AND MIGRATIONS

     

     
    Catalogue Contributors

    Tiffany E. Barber, PhD

    Assistant Professor, Africana Studies and Art History, University of Delaware

    LeRonn P. Brooks, Ph.D.
    Associate Curator for Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute

     

    Inquiries

    Daniel Strong

    strongdj@grinnell.edu

     

    WORKS

    34 pieces in various media

     

    SPACE REQUIRED

    3,500 square feet

     

    Available 2024 - 2025

     

    Download PDF Here

  • 'My earlier work is highly narrative and episodic. Myth and satire became a way to speak about the poles between...

     

    William Villalongo, The Wild, Wild, West!, 2007

    Collection of the Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA

    "My earlier work is highly narrative and episodic. Myth and satire became a way to speak about the poles between fiction and reality that accompany perceptions of black people and the relative absence and presence of the black image in the Western historical context...

  • A pair of navy high-top sneakers and a dead duck suspended above a platter holding a vase of flowers a recumbant Nkisi figure, a haunch of prosciutto, a bottle of malt liquor, and other foods.

     

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, Feast with nkisi, 2021

     

    ...Myths for better and for worse allow us to see the unimaginable or the not yet imagined. The history of race fiction is a lesson in how this poetic can be misused."

     

    - William Villalongo

  •  

    Works in the Exhibition

  • EARLY CUT PAPER

    • William Villalongo, The Last Days of Eden, 2009
      William Villalongo, The Last Days of Eden, 2009
    • William Villalongo, The Wild, Wild, West!, 2007
      William Villalongo, The Wild, Wild, West!, 2007
    Close
  • EARLY PAINTING

    • William Villalongo, Rhombus, 2010
      William Villalongo, Rhombus, 2010
    • William Villalongo, The Painting Lesson, 2012
      William Villalongo, The Painting Lesson, 2012
    • William Villalongo, Stocks and Bonds (Blue), 2012
      William Villalongo, Stocks and Bonds (Blue), 2012
    Close
  • WILLIAM VILLALONGO, Jubilee, 2010

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, Jubilee, 2010

  • EARLY SCULPTURE

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, STRANGER FRUIT, 2006

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, STRANGER FRUIT, 2006

  • re: History

    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Bamileke, Pende, Stella, Jensen), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Bamileke, Pende, Stella, Jensen), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Benin, Abstract Expressionism, Retro Porn), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Benin, Abstract Expressionism, Retro Porn), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Congo, Reinhardt, Chamberlain), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Congo, Reinhardt, Chamberlain), 2015
    Close
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Mami Wata, Triumph of Venus, J.P. Cazas), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Mami Wata, Triumph of Venus, J.P. Cazas), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Miro, Chokwe), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Miro, Chokwe), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Mondrian, Baule, Dogon), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Mondrian, Baule, Dogon), 2015
    Close
  • 'A figure, a still life, a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are vessels for information and sites to produce...

     

    William Villalongo, re: History--Affinities (Picasso, Dan), 2015

    "A figure, a still life, a painting, a drawing or a sculpture are vessels for information and sites to produce meaning...

     

  • ...my work is informed by humor, urgent emotion, ephemeral visions, current events, black critical theory, western and not-western symbolisms in...

     

    William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 5), 2015

    ...my work is informed by humor, urgent emotion, ephemeral visions, current events, black critical theory, western and not-western symbolisms in culture and art. I want to create sites of contemplation and wonder."

     

    - William Villalongo

    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 4), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 4), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 6), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 6), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 7), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 7), 2015
    Close
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 8), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 8), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 10), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 10), 2015
    • William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 11), 2015
      William Villalongo, re: History--Jet (Artifact 11), 2015
    Close
  • Recent Works

    • William Villalongo, Obertura de la Espora (Time Dancer), 2017 Collection of the Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA

      William Villalongo, Obertura de la Espora (Time Dancer), 2017

      Collection of the Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA

    • William Villalongo, Black Metamorphosis 1452, 2020
      William Villalongo, Black Metamorphosis 1452, 2020
    Close
  • 'To cut and paste over and under, to cut and see through, to cut and back up, to cut and...

     

    William Villalongo, Power Lawd!, 2019

    "To cut and paste over and under, to cut and see through, to cut and back up, to cut and paint in and on is to enact on real material the felt experience of moving though the world in a racialized body...  with a hope that it conveys something of the precarity of life itself and how we are all implicated in the struggles of others...

  • ...This is not about pain. It’s about love. It’s about recognizing that we are more than flesh, that we hold...

     

    William Villalongo, Speak No Evil, 2016

    ...This is not about pain. It’s about love. It’s about recognizing that we are more than flesh, that we hold and release time and histories."

     

    - William Villalongo

  • Cut black paper showing prone figure, legs and arms painted brown, body cut as filigree from paper

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, ZERO GRAVITY 2, 2018

  • WILLIAM VILLALONGO, THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (DIPTYCH), 2020

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO, THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (DIPTYCH), 2020

  • VIDEO

  • William Villalongo, Water Root, 2012
    HD BlueRay, 6:53 min, Edition of 5
  • PERFORMANCE

    • Villalongo Arsenal Still 7
    • Villalongo Arsenal Still 1
    • Villalongo Arsenal Still 3
    • Villalongo Arsenal Still 4
    Close
  • William Villalongo, Arsenal, 2004

    Performance at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC

  • WILLIAM VILLALONGO (b. 1975, Hollywood, FL) was raised Bridgeton, NJ and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received...

    Photo: Argenis Apolinario, NYC

    WILLIAM VILLALONGO (b. 1975, Hollywood, FL) was raised Bridgeton, NJ and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. 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. Recent exhibitions include Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Selections from the Rose Collection, 1933-2018, the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Living in America, curated by Assembly Room, the International Print Center, NYC; Afrocosmologies: American Reflections, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, OSilas Gallery, Concordia College, Bronxville, NY, travelling to Lehman College Art Gallery, Lehman College, Bronx, NY; New Mythologies: William Villalongo, The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, NC; Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; and the online exhibition, Life During Wartime, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL, among others. In 2023, Villalongo will have a solo museum exhibition originating at the Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA. He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor's Grant. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Grinnell College Museum of Art, Grinnell, IA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, among others. Villalongo is an Associate Professor at The Cooper Union School of Art, NYC.

  • About the Curator

    Daniel Strong

    Daniel Strong has been the Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Grinnell College Museum of Art since 1999. He holds Master's degrees from Williams College/Clark Art Institute and  the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University. He added the first piece by William Villalongo, The Wild, Wild West!, to the Grinnell College Museum of Art's collection in 2009; the second, Obertura de la Espora (Time Dancer), in 2018; and the third, The Mothership Connection, in 2021. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.

    Enquire
    About%20the%20Curator

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