Weston enacts the fold through a series of glass sculptures, some of them anchored by concrete or metal bases, that stage a tension between opacity and transparency. As the glass folds in on itself, it grows opaque, and any clarity it proposes quickly slips away. The tension is reinforced by the presence of the archival material etched onto and fused into the ribbon-like structures. It\u2019s not always clear what we\u2019re looking at, and that seems to be Weston\u2019s point: the opacity of the image disturbs our notion of an archive rendered up for seamless reception in the dominant terms of the present. In line with Weston\u2019s interest in the \u201ctactics of refusal\u201d available to Black subjects, the works do not yield themselves to their viewer so easily. If one may wonder whether more information about the particular <\/em>archival materials presented here could have contributed to this set of works, I also found my expectations productively confronted by how these fugitive works refuse to smoothly transmit meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"Charisse-Pearlina-Weston-untitled-Life-Magazine-May\"$

Charisse Pearlina Weston<\/strong>
untitled (Life Magazine, May 1, 1964)<\/em>, 2022, installation view, Queens Museum, New York, 2023.
Photo: Hai Zhang, courtesy of the artist &
Queens Museum, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Charisse-Pearlina-Weston-this-present-world-of-fact-when-the-hymn-clock-disjoints-its-own-time\"$
Charisse Pearlina Weston<\/strong>
this present world of fact (when the hymn clock disjoints its own time),<\/em> 2022, installation view, Queens Museum, New York, 2023.
Photo: Hai Zhang, courtesy of the artist &
Queens Museum, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
More direct in its intervention is the title piece of the show. A large plane of glass looms over the gallery, slanted at an angle that prevents access to the adjoining chamber. Weston\u2019s historical referent for this conceptual work is the action of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), slated to take place on April 4, 1964, in which activists would disrupt the opening of the 1964\u201365 World\u2019s Fair with a highway \u201cstall-in.\u201d The work revives the action\u2019s planned obstruction by indexing the site-specific histories of the Queens Museum, which is located on the site of the Fair, in a historically Black and Brown neighbourhood. It\u2019s not immediately obvious that one cannot walk into the adjacent room, and the piece resuscitates the radical energy of the stall-in, frustrating the easy passage that institutions often promise us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the CORE action never happened. The protest was cancelled due to pressure from the national chapter of CORE, city officials, and the local media. Weston therefore operates in a speculative mode as she meditates on what Black practices of freedom can look like. Sometimes obliquely and other times with shocking clarity, the exhibition animates the radical potential of what could have happened, and what remains<\/em> to happen. <\/em>Weston finds herself in good company with the critical theorists whom she cites as inspiration, and her show offers a unique perspective on practices of fugitivity in its disruptions of historiographic protocols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Writer Connor Spencer is based in New York City. A PhD student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, he is interested in queer and trans studies, critical theory, and Marxist approaches to aesthetic objects.<\/p>\n
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