Wifredo Lam No Longer Waits by the Coatroom

"An artwork's position in the museum, both spatially and interpretively, matters. It was this architecture of visibility that fueled critic John Yau's landmark essay " Please wait by the coatroom " (1988), titled after the corridor where the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) once relegated Cuban artist Wifredo Lam's painting "La Jungla(The Jungle)" (1943). For years, the painting hung in the lobby beside the bag-check - technically public, yet outside the main galleries and the art history they conveyed."

"Born to an Afro-Cuban mother and Chinese father in 1902, Lam studied art in Spain before the outbreak of the Civil War - in which he served briefly - and relocated to Paris in 1938, where he befriended leading artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, André Breton, and Óscar Domínguez. In these years, Lam's work moved decisively toward a modernist vocabulary."

MoMA mounted a retrospective titled When I Don't Sleep, I Dream that allocates full space to Wifredo Lam's practice. Lam pursued a distinct dialogue with African and Afro-diasporic visual cultures while the Parisian avant-garde often exoticized his heritage. Born to an Afro-Cuban mother and Chinese father in 1902, he trained in Spain, served briefly in the Civil War, and relocated to Paris in 1938. He befriended artists including Picasso, André Breton, and Óscar Domínguez and absorbed Cubist structures and Surrealist automatism. His painting La Jungla had long been relegated to a lobby near the bag-check, signaling institutional marginalization.

Read at Hyperallergic