Allen-Golder Carpenter: Water Memory

23 November 2023 - 13 January 2024
  • Allen-Golder Carpenter

    Water Memory
  • Born Allen-Golder Mullin Carpenter, 1999 in Washington DC, is a gender non-conforming interdisciplinary artist, designer, poet, author and activist. Their work as an artist serves to reconcile the various aspects of their identity as they relate themselves and the world around them. 

    "A project exploring the idea of memory in its various forms, intersected with the human relationship to water as conduit and vessel for those forms. In this project I photographed my older brother and grandfather, interviewing the latter about his life and our family history. The overarching ideas are inspired by the theory that water holds memory, and the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes which makes the intergenerational connection between black people through reference to bodies of water. With the usage of such reference to contextualize the greater role of water and memory as two inseparable spiritual materials.“
    Allen-Golder Carpenter
  • Allen-Golder Carpenter's exhibition Water Memory shows a part of an ongoing body of work called Body Surrogates. The exhibited works...

    Allen-Golder Carpenter

    Next to you, next to me (Curtis Valentine), 2023

    Leather boots set inside concrete castor same boot, dress shoes

    40x30 cm; 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in

    Allen-Golder Carpenter's exhibition Water Memory shows a part of an ongoing body of work called Body Surrogates. The exhibited works represent a surrogate sentinel of the human body, particularly the black male form through which Golder Carpenter deals with questions of male identity and performance of masculinity. Alongside these topics, the artist consistently talks about gender aesthetics, shown explicitly in their work Untitled (Vacuum Seal Bag), which consists of a vacuum-sealed bag containing two tank tops sewn together at the bottom to be worn as a dress, presenting a convertible state also depicted in Carpenter's small series of polaroids. Throughout the exhibition, the artist's Body Surrogates take up space, create a presence and complete and communicate with each other. 

     

    Next to You, Next to Me (Curtis Valentine) presents another anecdote to the artist's personal history - an ode to an old mentor of Carpenter, a black teacher the artist was looking up to in their childhood as they were able to make space for like young men, particularly young black men and give them the presence that a lot of other people wouldn't give them. Placed next to the concrete cast Nike Air Max work boots are a pair of dress shoes recreating the artist's memory of young people wanting to gather around their teacher.

     
  • Carpenter's work revolves around the personal processing of their family history and memory, which depicts the show's core topic. The...
    Allen-Golder Carpenter
    Untitled (Photo wall), 2023
    Photo Album, pharmacy photo prints, polaroids, Xerox copies
    175 x 31 cm; 68 7/8 x 12 1/4 in

    Carpenter's work revolves around the personal processing of their family history and memory, which depicts the show's core topic. The work Untitled (Photo Wall) shows, on the one hand, a range of photographs of their brother being taught how to wash various garments (in the methods of the artist’s own fashion practice); on the other hand, photos of their grandfather being interviewed. With this, Carpenter shows a cross-generational perspective while juxtaposing images of surveillance and the context around such images with a man who worked as a government official. History that has impacted their family for the better or the worse. In doing so, they found a way to process and commemorate their family's history and reconnect with them. The photo essay is centered around memory in various forms, e.g., diving into generational and cultural memory as an intangible spiritual material. To place memory in a physical form, Carpenter draws from the oldest visual metaphors for the subconscious and thus water as a recurring element in his show, as a metaphor for memory. Water that holds memory, water that contains history, like the topic of Langston Hughes Negro speaks of rivers, which Carpenter draws inspiration from.

     
  • The transcript of Carpenter’s interview with his grandfather also got printed on the reverse of another freestanding, sculptural installation, preserved...
    Allen-Golder Carpenter
    Untitled , 2023
    Clothes rack, plastic bags, shattered glass, photo print, paper sheets, strips of tanktop 
    120 x 165 cm; 47 1/4 x 65 in

    The transcript of Carpenter’s interview with his grandfather also got printed on the reverse of another freestanding, sculptural installation, preserved in inmate inventory bags handed to people before getting incarcerated, each filled with a shredded piece of tanktop mingled with shattered glass. These elements raise questions of identity while one is coming to pieces, falling apart as a person. What do you pick back up and take with you? What do you leave behind - against our will? And are there pieces shattered in you you never get back or can’t put back together?

     

    This theme of something shattered, holding something together against its will, is also embodied by the central installation Body Surrogate 1. The core element of this piece is the artist’s shower cabin from his childhood home, in a shattered state, spreading minuscule fragments of tempered glass across the floor while larger shards are forcefully held together with translucent tape. Once again, it connects with the idea of water as a holder of memory in an almost literal sense, with the artist including a glass of water behind the damaged shower cabin. Interested in the subconscious and dream theory, Carpenter here references a superstition predominantly established in Africa that putting a glass of water under your bed wards off nightmares and thus expands on the symbolism of water used in their work. Water holds memory; it remembers - but what memories do tears hold? 

     
    • Allen-Golder Carpenter The rain never really stops, 2023 Umbrella, Glass, shattered Glass, Inkjet Print, razor blades 140 x 10 cm 55 1/8 x 4 in
      Allen-Golder Carpenter
      The rain never really stops, 2023
      Umbrella, Glass, shattered Glass, Inkjet Print, razor blades
      140 x 10 cm
      55 1/8 x 4 in
    • Allen-Golder Carpenter Untitled (Polaroid), 2023 Polaroid 9 x 11 cm 3 1/2 x 4 3/8 in 17/22
      Allen-Golder Carpenter
      Untitled (Polaroid), 2023
      Polaroid
      9 x 11 cm
      3 1/2 x 4 3/8 in
      17/22
    • Allen-Golder Carpenter Untitled (iPhone), 2023 one channel video installation; duration: 1 min 16 seconds iPhone, iPhone Charging Caple, Phone charger wall adapter, nails, screen protector 14 x 7 cm 5 1/2 x 2 3/4 in
      Allen-Golder Carpenter
      Untitled (iPhone), 2023
      one channel video installation; duration: 1 min 16 seconds
      iPhone, iPhone Charging Caple, Phone charger wall adapter, nails, screen protector
      14 x 7 cm
      5 1/2 x 2 3/4 in
  •  
    Selected solo exhibitions include To Dream of Smoke, No Gallery, New York City, NY (forthcoming, 2024); Water Memory, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, Austria (2023); Ghetto Body Surrogate / My Body My Song, Screw Gallery, Leeds, UK (2022); Afotèz: Paper, Cotton, Stone./ SAMSARA , von Ammon CO, Washington D.C. (2022)
     
    Selected group exhibitions and projects include NADA, No Gallery, Miami (2023); Very Friendly, HOUS, Berlin (2023); Armory Off-Site at the US Open, No Gallery, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center; NADA New York, No Gallery, New York, NY (2023); FOCUS GROUP 4, von Ammon Co, Washington D.C. (2023);Dwelling, White Columns (Online), New York, NY (2023); 20/92, Icebox Project Space, Philadelphia, PA (2023); Before Black Had A Name, Shungu Gallery, Frederick, MD (2021); Unveiling Resistance, Galleries at CCBC Essex, Baltimore, MD (2021)