Fall 2021 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) Newsletter

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
FAISAL ABDU’ALLAH
Blu 3 eprint
MMOCA’S STATE STREET EXTERIOR • COMING SOON
Faisal Abdu’Allah’s Blu 3 eprint is a nearly seven-foot sculpture of a seated figure emerging from a rectangular block of roughly
hewn limestone. A dimensional rendering of Abdu’Allah himself, the figure sits in a chair, appearing calm and confident as
his left hand grips the armrest, while the subtly oblique angle of his right leg advances his shoe slightly beyond the edge of the
stone base. Perhaps familiar to some, the pose Abdu’Allah chose for Blu 3 eprint mirrors that of a different sculpture that has
been an enduring feature of Madison’s public art landscape: Abraham Lincoln (1909), a bronze monument by Adolph Weinman.
Situated at the top of the University of Wisconsin’s Bascom Hill, Weinman’s Lincoln has gazed out over East Campus and State
Street, toward the State Capitol and beyond, for over 100 years. Now,
a stone sculpture of a Black artist will gaze back.
Abdu’Allah, Professor and Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art
at UW-Madison, conceived of Blu 3 eprint as a counter-monument—
a contemporary sculpture erected as a counterpoint to an existing
monument. When Abraham Lincoln was unveiled on June 22,
1909, the bronze statue was heralded by UW Regents as “a sign to
all future generations of the high ideals of American citizenship.”
In recent years, however, the monument has been at the center of
heated debates between the university administration and a growing
contingent of students who want it removed. The students point to
Lincoln’s anti-Indigenous policies and his belief, despite his opposition
to slavery, in white racial superiority over Blacks. Instead of
arguing over whether the bronze should remain on campus or be
banished from public sight, Abdu’Allah proposed an alternative
solution: commission artists of color to create new monuments that
represent their own aesthetics, histories, and experiences.
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With Blu 3 eprint, Abdu’Allah accomplishes just that. The artist
replaces Lincoln’s staid armchair with a barber’s chair, a nod to the
barbershop as a space of cultural belonging for many communities
of color. Abdu’Allah, a trained barber himself, sees both the barber’s
salon and the artist’s studio as sites of becoming, where cultural
activity unfolds and self-reflection evolves.