PERILOUS BODIES

uring the March launch of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice’s new gallery in New York, artist Vanessa German entered the building’s garden atrium, her body swimming in indigo fabric, as if emerging from the sea. The heavy skirt, crafted from hanging parcels of cloth in shades of blue, trailed on the floor as she moved. Surrounded by tropical plants and pools of water, (2019)—a combination of a cappella singing and poetry—repeating the refrain, “If my hands were anything other than hands […] they would be two shooting stars, galloping light across the galaxy.” Later, she wondered what miracle her hands could have performed for “the frightened police officers who shoot because they swear the hand was a gun.” Speaking to the vulnerability of black bodies to police brutality in the United States, was a fitting opener to the Ford Foundation Gallery’s inaugural exhibition “Perilous Bodies,” curated by Jaishri Abichandani and Natasha Becker, and centered on artistic responses to systemic oppression.