Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and sonsbeek20→24 present:

Abstracting Parables is a manifestation of three distinct historical voices and artistic positions, each proposing unique understandings of how abstraction can be translated into multiple and complex languages. The exhibition brings together the works of Dutch-Jewish painter and composer Sedje Hémon (1923-2011), Afro-Brazilian painter, poet, essayist, dramatist, and political activist Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011), and Pakistani artist and designer Imran Mir (1950-2014).

Conceived as an exhibition with three in(ter)dependent chapters, Abstracting Parables is approached as a work of translation. In its meaning ‘to carry across’, the exhibition deliberates on translations of meaning to form, thoughts to symbols, symbols to language, and language to experiences.

Central to this exhibition is Hémon’s, Mir’s, and Nascimento’s relationships with abstraction, geometry, spiritualities, histories, and the way their works inherently challenge the confines of modernism–opening up a world of multiple modernisms. The exhibition highlights the artists’ multifaceted oeuvres across geographies and histories, as tales that assemble and interlink aesthetic, socio-political, spiritual, and scientific discourses.

By presenting these positions at the Stedelijk, the institution continues its critical engagement with the blind spots, historical gaps, and silences in its collection.

Around 1960, with the support of art historian Hans Jaffé, Deputy Director of the Stedelijk Museum, twenty drawings were donated by Hémon to the Stedelijk Museum. Although her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Documenta 14 (2017), this exhibition marks the first major presentation of Hémon's work in the Netherlands.

The selection of large-scale works in these rooms show how paint as a material offered Mir the possibility to play with expressive forms—both their geometry and gestures. The recurrence of a rich vocabulary of lines, squares, circles, triangles, and the ways in which they are put in relation with each other, give his work a certain architectural, or sculptural quality. The selected paintings and installations express the wealth of Mir’s ideas, as well as provide insight into the trajectory and transformation from his first series of paintings to his latest works—with their complex geometrical forms that evoke abstract languages.

This exhibition is Mir’s first major survey in Europe. It sets out to echo his credo “What you see is what you see”, which expresses his refusal of a classical art historical reading of his work, inviting you instead to wander amongst his paintings—and to contemplate.

In his art, Nascimento found another space for his research into the historiographies, political concerns, epistemologies, and teleologies of African peoples, both on the continent and in the diasporas. In his painting practice, which spans over four decades, he uses myths, concepts, and aphorisms from ancient Egypt, the Yoruba’s, and the Ashanti’s. Together, his body of work can be seen as a compendium of aesthetic, philosophical, and political discourses on Blackness and resistance, and resistance inBlackness. This presentation of Nascimento’s work is structured into five chapters and trajectories that flow through his oeuvre: Activism, Passage, Sexuality, Symbolism/Semiology, and Theogony. In terms of style, his paintings defy categorization as either figuration or abstraction, as the gods, the human, the geometric structures, the spiritualities, and cosmogonies that he depicts, or evokes, transcend any effort to categorize.

From 1968 to 1982, he was in exile from the military regime in Brazil. During this period he exhibited widely in among others the U.S., where he also held several academic positions, such as Professor of African Cultures at the State University of New York. Upon his return from exile he founded the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute (IPEAFRO), which organized the 3rd Congress of Black Culture in the Americas (1982). Nascimento received national and international honors for his work, including the United Nations’ Human Rights Prize and UNESCO’s special Toussaint Louverture Award, granted to him and to poet, author, and politician Aimé Césaire in 2004 for their contribution to the global anti-racism movement.

CONTEXTUALISATION ROOM
For the wandering spirits, in the middle of the exhibition’s circuit Abstracting Parables offers a Contextualisation Room. Here artistic fragments of the three artists are interlinked, to show how they are connected through overarching themes such as resistance, cosmos, and sound. Also situated here is Parasite Radio, sonsbeek20→24’s broadcasting program in the (digital) ether.

Functioning as a mixtape, the exhibition includes a sonic route that gently guides you through and animates the worlds of Hémon, Nascimento, and Mir. With contributions by friends, family members, and artists—voices that keep the memory and practice of these artists alive today.

OPENING DAYS PROGRAMME
The public opening will take place on Friday July 1 and Saturday July 2 with a series of conversations and interventions on Abdias Nascimento, Imran Mir, and Sedje Hémon. Among others they will include a diversity of speakers such as Elmyra van Dooren, Zippora Elders, Claire van Els, Krista Jantowski, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, Aude Christel Mgba, Nighat Mir, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and Romy Rüegger.

READERS
Abstracting Parables will be accompanied by three readers, one on each of the artists, published by Archive Books. The contributing authors are Elmyra van Dooren, Keyna Eleison, Natasha Ginwala, Lélia Gonzalez, Negarra Kudumu, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, Abdias Nascimento, Cannach MacBride, Marianna Maruyama, Momtaza Mehri, Nighat Mir, Quddus Mirza, Kabengele Munanga, Gwen Parry, Nafisa Rizvi, Romy Rüegger, Maurice Rummens, Peter Wapperom, and Olabiyi Yai.