Whitney Biennial 2017
Mar 17–June 11, 2017
Kevin Jerome Everson
14
Floor 3
Born 1965 in Mansfield, OH
Lives in Charlottesville, VA
Over the past twenty-five years, Kevin Jerome Everson has captured the nuances of Black lived experience on film. Like his earlier work, Everson’s recent short films continue to challenge distinctions between documentary and fiction, revealing incisive depictions of African American life.
Lost Nothing (2016) utilizes an intimate monologue to examine the daily impact of social conditions on the life of one man, Willie James Crittenden. Sound That and Fe26 (both 2014) offer diverging glimpses of labor utilizing beguiling objects made by the artist. In Ears, Nose and Throat (2016), while receiving a medical exam a woman recounts having witnessed a murder. Fastest Man in the State (2017), codirected by Claudrena N. Harold, reflects on the experience of one of the first African American scholarship athletes at the University of Virginia. Finally, Eason (2016) explores the legacy of the Great Migration by following the trajectory of James Walker Hood Eason, the assassinated leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Screenings: April 8–9
Ears, Nose and Throat, 2016
Kevin Jerome Everson (b. 1965), still from Ears, Nose and Throat, 2016. 16mm film transferred to high-definition video, color, sound; 10:30 min. Courtesy the artist; Trilobite-Arts DAC, Charlottesville, VA; and Picture Palace Pictures, New York