Athens Biennale #7
Eclipse
The gallery loaned artworks by Zebedee Armstrong on the occasion of the seventh edition of the Athens Biennial, co-organized by Omsk Social Club and Larry Ossei-Mensah under the artistic direction of Poka-Yio.
ECLIPSE seeks to assess the implications of identity, history, and cultural complexity. The 7th Athens Biennale offers an arena to interrogate many of the ideas, queries, concerns, and desires that are frequently not platformed within a Biennial format. In an effort to activate a dynamic cross-cultural discourse, the exhibition will highlight the works of artists from the African Diaspora in addition to other artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery. This engagement will be articulated through the use of a “Black Lens” as one of the frameworks.
Armstrong was born in Thomson, Georgia. He went to school until eighth grade. He married in 1929 and had two daughters. For much of his life, he worked picking cotton on the local Mack McCormick farm. After his wife died in 1969, he began to work at the Thomson Box Factory, staying there until 1982. In 1972, he claimed to be visited by an angel who warned him that the end of world was coming soon. Armstrong went on to construct almost 1,500 box calendars with the aim of trying to determine the exact date of the approaching doomsday. Many of the calendars are made of wood with clocks and dials, painted white and over-layered with grids or with text denoting the box’s purpose.