In Response to Leon Golub: Rashid Johnson, Tiona Nekkia McClodden & Taryn Simon with a performance by Zahra Alzubaidi

About ‘Leon Golub. Et In Arcadia Ego’ 
‘Et In Arcadia Ego’ takes the work of late American master Leon Golub (1922-2004) as a starting point to consider artists’ approaches to issues of conflict and uncertainty. Conceived by Rashid Johnson, this exhibition consists of a solo presentation of Golub’s paintings from the early 1950s to the late 1990s on the fifth floor of the gallery’s 22nd Street building, and a complementary group presentation of works in different mediums by international artists, including both Golub and Johnson himself, that spans the post-war period to the present day on the gallery’s second floor.

Taken together, the works on the second floor invite expanded insights into the psychic and sociopolitical approaches Golub took in depicting uses and abuses of power. Among the artists Johnson chose for this presentation are Philip Guston (1913-1980), David Hammons, Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Teresa Margolles, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Taryn Simon. The exhibition also includes text excerpts from such writers as Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1934-2014), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Percival Everett––prose that provides another entry point to the complexities of human nature expressed throughout the show.

About Rashid Johnson 
Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. Johnson received a BA in Photography from Columbia College in Chicago and studied for his masters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Johnson's practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media--including sculpture, painting, drawing, film making, and installation--yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history. Johnson's work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing aspects of history and cultural identity. Many of Johnson’s more recent works delve into existential themes such as personal and collective anxiety, interiority, and liminal space.

Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Seven Rooms and a Garden. Rashid Johnson + Moderna Museet,' Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2023; ‘Rashid Johnson. Nudiustertian,' Hauser & Wirth, Hong Kong, 2023; ‘The Chorus,' The Metropolitan Opera, New York NY, 2021; ‘Summer Projects. Rashid Johnson,' Creative Time, New York, NY, 2021; ‘Rashid Johnson. Capsule,' National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, 2021; ‘The Crisis,' Storm King Art Center, New Windsor NY; ‘Rashid Johnson. Waves,' Hauser & Wirth, London, UK, 2020; the touring exhibition ‘Rashid Johnson. The Hikers’ at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO, the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico and at Hauser & Wirth, New York, 2019; ‘Provocations. Rashid Johnson,' Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond VA, 2018; ‘Rashid Johnson. No More Water’ at Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland, 2018 and ‘Rashid Johnson. Hail We Now Sing Joy’ at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO which traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee WI, 2017.

About Tiona Nekkia McClodden
Tiona Nekkia McClodden takes an interdisciplinary approach as a visual artist, filmmaker and curator to interrogate ideas of ritual and order through its relationship to identity and the conditions of being human. Traversing documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, sound installation and poetry, her practice explores themes of Black interiority, biomythography and queer poetics.

About Taryn Simon 
Taryn Simon directs our attention to the unseen forces shaping the worlds we inhabit. Her projects, using photography, sculpture, text, sound and performance, center on storytelling, secrecy, and the hidden contours of power and authority.

Her multi-year projects are informed by research with varied institutions such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the International Commission on Missing Persons, the Fine Arts Commission of the CIA, Playboy Enterprises, and the New York Public Library.

Some of Simon’s other exhibitions and books include "The Innocents," documenting the stories of individuals who served time in American prisons for violent crimes they did not commit; "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar," examining the divide between public and expert access through hidden and unknown objects and sites in the United States; "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII," mapping chance and other components of fate in bloodlines throughout the world, "Paperwork and the Will of Capital," unraveling the stagecraft of power and the broken promises it yields, and "An Occupation of Loss" in which professional mourners enact rituals of grief, simultaneously broadcasting their lamentations from within a sculptural installation.

About Zahra Alzubaidi 
Born in Iraq, Zahra Alzubaidi is a vocalist who performs a variety of Arabic styles, with a focus on music of Iraq. She has performed as a featured artist in prestigious music venues and cultural festivals throughout the US, as well as appearing in multiple film productions as a singer.  Zahra is a recipient of the NYSCA Folk & Traditional Arts Apprenticeship 2024 Program, studying Iraq's predominant classical music tradition, the Iraqi Maqam, under the mentorship of renowned master reciter Hamid Al-Saadi. 

She celebrates the Iraqi musical heritage by studying and preserving the tradition as well as performing and collaborating with other musicians from around the world.