{"id":154686,"date":"2025-09-19T10:47:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/154686\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:47:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:47:15","slug":"nanette-carter-is-a-pioneer-of-black-abstraction-and-shes-still-experimenting-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/154686\/","title":{"rendered":"Nanette Carter Is a Pioneer of Black Abstraction\u2014and She\u2019s Still Experimenting Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Portrait of Nanette Carter. Courtesy of the Wexner Center for the Arts. <\/p>\n

When she was in high school, Nanette Carter<\/a> walked into the Guggenheim<\/a> on a field trip to see the 1971 Piet Mondrian<\/a> retrospective unfurling along the museum\u2019s spiraling gallery. The experience was revelatory. \u201cIt was a flash that someone could change so drastically and create a type of art that no one had ever seen before,\u201d she said in an interview in her studio, an apartment in Washington Heights where the artist has worked since 1981. <\/p>\n

Carter comes from the lineage of Black American abstractionists<\/a> but has long carved out a distinct path, particularly with her experimental use of materials. Her studio bears witness to this restless practice: rolls of Mylar, the industrial polyester film that has become her signature, lean against the wall; older reliefs in metal and wood are mounted in the studio\u2019s long hallway; half-erased pencil sketches cover the main room, mapping out her complex abstract forms. Scattered among them are reminders of her long, evolving career, from ambitious abstractions done at the Triangle Workshop in 1991 to the small ceramic Cheeks, a sculpture she made as a teenager in the late 1960s and early \u201970s at Montclair High School in New Jersey, just outside New York City. Now, at 71, Carter is experimenting with three dimensions in different contexts, introducing new steel sculptures. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, installation view of \u201cAfro Sentinels\u201d at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, 2025. Photo by Matthew Pevear. Courtesy of Wexner Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to come off the wall for years,\u201d Carter told me, as she prepared to travel to her birthplace, Columbus, Ohio, to install a major solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts. \u201cAfro Sentinels,\u201d on view through January 11, 2026, brings together her signature wall-based abstractions while debuting her first freestanding \u201cAfro Sentinels.\u201d The exhibition caps a remarkably active stretch for the artist: Earlier this year, she was the subject of a retrospective at the Montclair Art Museum<\/a>. This follows solo shows at New York\u2019s Berry Campbell Gallery<\/a> in 2022 and 2024. Justice, community, and the turbulence of contemporary life surface throughout her practice. Today, she\u2019s confronting what she calls the \u201cseismic changes\u201d of the past decade.<\/p>\n

Childhood and early influences<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Portrait of Nanette Carter in her studio, 2024. \u00a9 Adam Reich. Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.<\/p>\n

Born in Columbus, Carter recalls how \u201cpleased\u201d she felt when her parents moved to New Jersey, especially for its proximity to New York. \u201cJust going into the city opened my eyes up,\u201d she said. Her father, Matthew G. Carter, was a prominent civil rights leader who later became the town\u2019s first Black mayor. Meanwhile, her mother encouraged her creativity from an early age, gifting her stationery in a spectrum of vibrant colors, for example. \u201cI didn\u2019t write a note,\u201d Carter joked. \u201cI was collaging with the paper and giving it to friends\u2026These were geometric abstractions. They loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter\u2019s family often spent the summers in Sag Harbor, New York. In the summer of 1977, while pursuing her MFA at Pratt, Carter took a job at the Guild Hall museum in East Hampton. There, she met the painter Al Loving<\/a> at an opening: \u201cThis tall, handsome Black man, and we saw each other and just gravitated immediately,\u201d she recalled. Loving, known for his amorphous, color-clashing wall works, would become a mentor, influencing how Carter approached her work and introducing her to artists like Jack Whitten<\/a> and Ed Clark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, Cantilevered (On Stilts) #18, 2015. \u00a9 Nanette Carter. Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, Destabilizing #1, 2021. \u00a9 John and Susan Horseman Collection. Courtesy of the Wexner Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n

Through Loving, Carter met legendary dealer George N\u2019Namdi in Detroit, who gave her a solo show in 1984. By her late twenties, she had shown with some of the most prominent Black abstract expressionists, including Whitten, Clark, and Howardena Pindell<\/a>. She explained, \u201cI like to say: \u2018I come from the school of Loving.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Architecture and Mylar <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, Shifting Perspectives #1, 2022. \u00a9 Nanette Carter. Courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.<\/p>\n

Carter first encountered Mylar, which would define her material practice, unexpectedly at a Frank Lloyd Wright<\/a> show at the Cooper Hewitt<\/a> in 1983. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what that was,\u201d she recalled. Curious, she immediately bought a sheet, cut it down, and began experimenting. \u201cIt was just a wonderful, smooth sensation drawing on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That first sheet led to decades of engagement. Carter now sources Mylar in massive rolls\u2014\u201c53 inches by 100 yards,\u201d she told me\u2014and relishes its versatility. \u201cIt\u2019s just magical stuff,\u201d she said. The tough, stiff material made it possible to create her complex, colorful, collage-like abstractions with immediacy. They aren\u2019t \u201ccollages,\u201d according to her. \u201cI am not collaging. I\u2019m building architecture on the ladder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Creating the \u201cAfro Sentinels\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, Afro Sentinels #3, 2024. Courtesy of the Wexner Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n

One of Carter\u2019s most powerful bodies of work, \u201cAfro Sentinels,\u201d began in the political climate of the late 2000s, when she witnessed vocal criticism of President Barack Obama and feared for his life. \u201cI thought, \u2018sentinels.\u2019 We need something to protect Black people from this kind of nonsense.\u201d <\/p>\n

Initially, the works were conceived as individual guardians, but over time, they expanded into army-like forms. On view at the Wexner, Afro Sentinels #3 (2024) presents 14 Mylar-based, 8-foot-tall abstractions resembling weapons hung across the wall. Her references included power figures from the Congo, studded with nails to ward off disease and safeguard communities, and the Terracotta Army<\/a> guarding the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Originally, the \u201cAfro Sentinels\u201d were exclusively wall works, but today, these pieces are accompanied by a new series by the same name, featuring freestanding steel sculptures intended as guardians.<\/p>\n

For fifty years, Carter has proven that abstraction can be politically urgent and deeply human. With her new three-dimensional \u201cAfro Sentinels,\u201d she transforms her iconic forms into enduring monuments of resilience. As social and political pressures that first inspired this work intensify, Carter emphasized, \u201cI want that presence now\u2014that physicality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abstract expressionism and political engagement<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nanette Carter, installation view of \u201cAfro Sentinels\u201d at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, 2025. Photo by Matthew Pevear. Courtesy of Wexner Center for the Arts.<\/p>\n

Carter has always been inspired by the world around her. For instance, her \u201cIllumination\u201d series (1984\u201386) drew from her first trip to Rio de Janeiro, incorporating the bright colors evocative of the city\u2019s Carnival festivities. More recently, pieces from her Mylar-based wall-work series, \u201cShifting Perspectives\u201d and \u201cDestabilizing,\u201d some on view at the Wexner, respond to violence, political upheaval, and the invasive presence of media in everyday life. Shifting Perspectives #8 (2022) sets jagged bands of blue, black, and gray into precarious alignment, a composition that evokes the fractures of social unrest while insisting on balance.<\/p>\n

If destabilizing forces often serve as her catalyst, Carter\u2019s abstractions also search for equilibrium. The \u201cCantilevered\u201d series, some of which are on view at the Wexner, explores the fragile balance between weight and suspension. She sees these abstract forms as ways to communicate political thought to a wide, diverse audience. \u201cI can [communicate through] this abstract form and really give a universal language to people,\u201d said Carter. <\/p>\n

MR<\/p>\n

\"MR\"<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb (Max) is a writer. Before joining Artsy in October 2023, he obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Georgia. Outside of Artsy, his bylines include the Washington Post, i-D, and the Chicago Reader. He lives in New York City, by way of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Portrait of Nanette Carter. Courtesy of the Wexner Center for the Arts. When she was in high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[12684,76,354,355,49,48,356,75,26589,81456],"class_list":{"0":"post-154686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist-profiles","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-maxwell-rabb","17":"tag-nanette-carter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}