Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 5

Born 1928 in Retreat, Jamaica
Died 2019 in Falmouth, VA

Throughout much of the 1970s and ‘80s, Mavis Pusey lived and worked near the Whitney’s current location in Chelsea. She consistently cited architecture, and especially the ever-changing New York cityscape as a source of inspiration for her work. “I am inspired by the energy and the beat of the construction and demolition of these buildings,” she wrote; “The tempo and movement mold into a synthesis and, for me, become another aesthetic of abstraction.” Her dynamic, hard-edge style deviated from the largely figurative work of prominent Black contemporaries and would set her apart in a field dominated by white male abstract painters. One of the works on view here, Dejygea, reflects the challenges of being a Black abstract painter in the 1970s. The Whitney featured Dejygea in its controversial 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America, from which multiple artists withdrew their works over the lack of Black representation among the show’s curatorial committee.