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.
Zebedee Armstrong never left Thomson, Georgia. In 1972, an angel came to him there and announced the end of the world. From then on he set out to calculate its hour: nearly 1,500 wooden box calendars, gridded in black, red and blue felt-tip, crowded with dates and scripture verses, which he called “taping with time.” Time, for him, is not endured: it is built. Each piece seems to wrest the date of Judgement from Scripture, and holds up a mirror to our own reckoning.
His work is held in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the American Folk Art Museum.