Rashaad Newsome

Rashaad Newsome (born 1979) is an American artist working at the intersection of technology, collage, sculpture, video, music, and performance. Newsome's work celebrates and abstracts Black and Queer contributions to the art canon, resulting in innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. He lives and works in Oakland, California, and Brooklyn, New York.

Education
Rashaad holds a 2023 honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut and a B.F.A. in art history at Tulane University (2001) and a certificate of study in digital post production from Film/Video Arts Inc, New York (2004). In 2005 he studied MAX/MSP programming at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center, New York.

Career
His work has been exhibited, screened, and performed in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals throughout the world, including the Park Avenue Armory, New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; The Whitney Museum of American Art,, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; and MUSA, Vienna. Newsome's work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Studio Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; McNay Art Museum, Texas; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia, The Chazen Museum of Art, Wisconsin; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; and The New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut. In 2010 he participated in the Whitney Biennial, New York, and in 2011 Greater New York at MoMA PS1, New York.

As American writer and activist Darnell L. Moore notes, "Newsome's object-based work exists between assemblage, collage, and sculpture. His works explode categories of being and raise questions about what images and objects one can use to suture a representation. His pulling together of found images used to construct a body of work is analogous to the process one must go through to build a self. What parts do we rid? And which do we seek to create? Newsome's oeuvre is more than the work of a visual artist; it is an ontological project." In 2013 Rashaad launched his annual King of Arms Art Ball, a live performance event that brings together renowned figures from the art, fashion, music, literary, activism, and LGBTQAI+ Ballroom community. Since the creation of the King of Arms Art Ball, Rashaad has been using the architecture of ballroom as a way to get people to think critically about the ways in which the culture of domination is at play in their lives. Rashaad hopes to remove from ballroom what he calls a focus on the gender binary and allegiance to capitalism. Instead, he asks participants to focus on their creativity. For Rashaad, a big part of the King of Arms Art Ball, is thinking about the ways that we have not only colonized our minds but our imaginations. How do we decolonize our imaginations? How do we use them in the service of our own wellbeing or as a form of resistance? The King of Arms Art Ball continues the tradition of these historic Harlem-originating competitions but focuses all of its categories on the work and legacy of BIPOC LQBTQAI+ artists. The King of Arms Art Ball creates a platform to celebrate queer artists of color, engage in critical pedagogy, explore contemporary social justice issues, and provide space for emerging artists to showcase their work. Past categories were inspired by such visionaries as El Anatsui, the Nicholas Brothers, Lorna Simpson, and Bill T. Jones

In addition to his very active art practice, Newsome runs his own production company, Rashaad Newsome Studio. Rashaad Newsome Studio is a full-service production company specializing in the convergence of film, art, media, design, live performance, music, fashion, and technology, working with some of the industry's most visionary talent and brands, including Atlantic Records, Solange Knowles, ASAP Mob, Absolut, Lamborghini, Alexander Wang, Yohji Yamamoto, Jonathan Adler, Ballet National de Marseille, and Snapchat.

In 2019, with his LACMA Art + Technology Lab's Grant, Newsome created the first generation of his unique and provocative Artificial Intelligence, Being 1.0, which functioned as a critical tour guide to his 2020 exhibition To Be Real at Fort Mason Center for Art and Culture, in San Francisco, CA. During Being's interactions with viewers they explore a variety of challenging topics:


 * Art historical erasure.
 * The social implications of artificial intelligence regarding rights liberties.
 * Labor and automation.
 * The importance of the imagination as a form of liberation.
 * The subjectivity of body autonomy within an inherently inequitable society.

At various points in Being's tour, they say, "Girl, bye, I need to express myself." At this moment, the frame pulls back from the avatar's bust/head to show Being's full-body dancing to the song Got To Be Real. They also periodically say, "Look, booboo, I just can't," and break the tour script to read excerpts from radical theorists like Bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Cornel West or James Baldwin as a simulation of their agency and or resistance against their indentured servitude.

Since then, Newsome has been in residence at The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, where he is developing a spin-off called Being 1.5, a mobile/web-based therapy app created to exclusively help African American people manage trauma from daily racial indignities, as well as the second generation of the IRL version called Being 2.0(The Digital Griot). which premiered in Newsome's 2022 solo exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall. In the artist's words, "Being 2.0 is a reimagining of non-Eurocentric archive and education models like the griot, a West African cultural figure that acts as a historian, library, performance artist, and healer. As a digital griot, Being's purpose is to help humans radically decolonize their minds through workshops that combine lecture, critical thinking, dance, storytelling, EMDR therapy, and mindfulness meditation. Described by the NY Times as "gracious and humble … sweet, sassy and a bit goofy," Being's approach to education is active and brings new possibilities for research and an enhanced academic experience for all people.

Awards
2021


 * Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, Knight Foundation

2020


 * Artist Residency, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
 * Rapid Response Fellowship, Eyebeam

2019


 * Art + Technology Lab Grant, LACMA
 * MediaMaker Fellowship, BAVC

2018


 * William Penn Foundation Grant
 * Live Feed Creative Residency, New York Live Arts

2017


 * Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
 * Gold Rush Award, Rush Arts

2016


 * Artist Residency at the Tamarind Institute, NM

2014


 * Visiting Artist Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts

2011


 * Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award

2010


 * Urban Artist Initiative Individual Artist Grant

2009


 * Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Grant

Solo exhibitions
2022


 * Assembly, Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall, New York, NY, United States

2020


 * Black Magic, Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, NY, United States
 * To Be Real, Fort Mason Center for Art & Culture, San Francisco, California, United States

2019


 * ICON/STOP PLAYING IN MY FACE!, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, United States

2017


 * Reclaiming Our Time, Debuck Gallery, New York, New York, United States
 * Mélange, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

2016


 * STOP PLAYING IN MY FACE!, DeBuck Gallery, New York, New York, United States
 * THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, United States

2015


 * Order of Chivalry, Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, United States
 * Silence Please The Show Is About To Begin, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada

2014


 * LS.S, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York, United States
 * FIVE, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, United States

2013


 * King of Arms, The New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

2011


 * Herald, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York, United States.
 * Rashaad Newsome/MATRIX 161, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, United States.

2010


 * Honorable Ordinaries, Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, New York, United States.
 * Futuro, ar/ge Kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano, Italy.

2009


 * Standards, Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, New York, United States.

Group exhibitions
2022


 * In the Black Fantastic, Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2021


 * The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, United States

2020


 * Mothership: Voyage into Afrofuturism, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California, United States
 * After La vida nueva, Artists Space, New York, New York, United States

2019


 * Elements of Vogue, El Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City
 * Radical Love, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, New York, United States

2018


 * Something to Say, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, United States

2017


 * Elements of Vogue, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain
 * Public Movement, Moderna Museet Malmö, Malmö, Sweden

2015


 * A Curious Blindness, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States

2014


 * Killer Heels, Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York, United States
 * BLACK EYE, New York, New York, United States

2013


 * GODDESS CLAP BACK: HIP HOP FEMINISM IN ART, CUE Art Foundation, New York, New York, US

2012


 * It’s Time to Dance Now, Centre national d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.
 * Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media, SFMOMA, San Francisco, California, United States
 * The Bearden Project, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York, United States

2011


 * Beauty Contest, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, New York, United States / MUSA, Vienna, Austria
 * Venice Biennale: "Commercial Break", Garage Projects, Venice, Italy

2010


 * Free, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York, United States
 * Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York, United States
 * Whitney Biennial, New York, New York, United States
 * Prospect 1.5, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Inspiration
Rashaad Newsome's work blends several practices, including collage, assemblage, sculpture, film, photography, music, computer programming, software engineering, community organizing, and performance, to create a new field that rejects classification. Using the diasporic traditions of improvisation, he pulls from the world of advertising, the internet, Art History, Black and Queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that walks the tightrope between creative computing, social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. The gesture of collage acts as a theoretical, conceptual, and technical method to construct a new cultural framework of power that does not find the oppression of others necessary. Newsome's work celebrates Black contributions to the art canon and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media.