Focus On | Allen-Golder Carpenter - Water Memory

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 his 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 he was 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 his 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 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? 

 

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.

 

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 Armory Off-SIte at the US Open, No Gallery, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing NY (forthcoming, 2023); 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); Pedagogy As Self, HOUSING, 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); February Install, Dupont Underground, Washington D.C. (2021)