Christopher Myers

Christopher Myers (born 1974) is an American interdisciplinary artist, author and illustrator of children's books, and playwright.Rhodes-Pitts, Sharifa. "Christopher Myers," BOMB, March 15, 2022. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Collins-Hughes, Laura. "A Show Reminds Young Audiences: We All Got Here From Somewhere," The New York Times, January 9, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Colón, Raúl. "'Ben Draws Trouble,' 'How to Draw a Dragon' and 'My Pen,'" The New York Times, May 8, 2015. Retrieved July 3, 2023. His wide-ranging practice—including tapestries, sculpture, stained glass lightboxes, theater and writing—is rooted in storytelling and artmaking as modes of transformation and cultural exchange.Hirsch, Liz, "Christopher Myers," Artforum, January 10, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Bowie, Summer. "Hybrid Forms: An Interview Of Artist & Storyteller Christopher Myers," Autre, January 19, 2020. Retrieved July 5, 2023. He explores contemporary hybrid cultures and identities resulting from histories of migration (chosen and forced), globalization and colonization.Calero. Fernanda. "Christopher Myers' 'of all creatures that can feel and think' is a Picturesque Cartography of History," Glasstire, Retrieved July 3, 2023.Art 21. Christopher Myers, Artists. Retrieved July 3, 2023. Critics have noted his work's fluid movement between disciplines, image and language, sociopolitical research and mythology, and diverse materials.Ollman, Leah. "How artist Christopher Myers stitched messages of freedom from everyday fabrics," Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Martin, Hannah. "Textile Artist Christopher Myers Debuts New Set of Figurative Quilts at Fort Gansevoort," Architectural Digest, November 14, 2019. Shana Nys Dambrot of LA Weekly wrote, "Ideas about authorship, collaboration, cross-cultural pollination, intergenerational storytelling, mythology, literature and the oral histories of displaced communities all converge in his literal and metaphorical patchwork tableaux ... [his] sharp, emotional and sometimes dark parables express it all in bright, jubilant patterns and saturated colors."Dambrot, Shana Nys. "The World in Pieces: Christopher Myers at Fort Gansevoort," LA Weekly, January 16, 2020. Retrieved July 3, 2023.

His work has been presented at venues including MoMA PS1, Kennedy Center, the Art Institute of Chicago and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.MoMA PS1. Christopher Myers, Artists. Retrieved July 3, 2023.The Kennedy Center. "Q&A with Cartography playwright Christopher Myers," Medium, January 4, 2019. Retrieved July 5, 2023.Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. "Fables," Exhibitions. Retrieved July 5, 2023. He has received a BRIC Arts Media prizeArtforum. "Inaugural Recipients of BRIC’s $100,000 Colene Brown Art Prize Announced," News, October 2, 2019. Retrieved July 3, 2023. and the American Library Association's Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award for his book illustration.Lipson, Eden Ross. "Girls' Stressful Tales Draw Newbery and Caldecott Awards," The New York Times, January 13, 1998. Retrieved July 3, 2023. Myers is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Life and career Christopher Dean Myers was born in 1974 in Queens, New York.Nasher Museum of Art. Hecate, Christopher Myers, Objects. Retrieved July 5, 2023. He attended Brown University, earning a BA in Art-Semiotics and American Civilization in 1995, and participated in the Whitney Museum of Art Independent Studio Program in 1996.

Myers is the son of well-known children's book author Walter Dean Myers (1937–2014).Bray, Rosemary L. "Children's Books," The New York Times, January 8, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2023.LA Opera. Christopher Myers, Artists. Retrieved July 3, 2023. They began collaborating in the mid-1990s, with Myers illustrating his father's books, and later, co-writing several with him.Kellogg, Carolyn. "2015 Newbery, Caldecott and Printz awards announced," Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2015. Retrieved July 5, 2023. He began to publish his own self-illustrated books with Black Cat in 1999, continuing through My Pen (2015).Emberley, Michael. "Children's Books; Not Like Other Boys," The New York Times, November 19, 2000. Retrieved July 5, 2023.Kellogg, Carolyn. "Caldecott, Newbery Medals awarded by American Library Assn.," Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2013. Retrieved July 5, 2023. In 2000, he began to exhibit his art. He has appeared in surveys including "Greater New York" (MoMA PS1, 2005), the Prospect New Orleans Biennial (2014), Biennial of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana) (2017), and the 2021 Desert X Biennial.Morris, Benjamin. "Let There Be Light: The Propeller Group with Christopher Myers," Pelican Bomb, December 10, 2014.Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts. The 32nd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts: Birth as Criterion, 2017. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Vankin, Deborah. "Desert X art biennial sets a March opening, minus Palm Springs’ support," Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2023. He has had solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem,Studio Museum of Harlem. Christopher Myers, Artists. Retrieved July 5, 2023. the Akron Art Museum,Burkey, Chris. "Museums, Akron Art Museum" Record-Courier, February 12, 2003. Fort Gansevoort, James Cohan Gallery,Angeleti, Gabriella and Benjamin Sutton. "Three exhibitions to see in New York this weekend: Christopher Myers," The Art Newspaper, March 11, 2022. Retrieved July 3, 2023. and the Blaffer Art Museum. Since 2014, he has also collaborated on film, performance and theater works as a designer, writer and director, with artists such as Kaneza Schaal and Hank Willis Thomas.Brantley, Ben. "Review: 'Go Forth' Finds the Living and the Dead Bound Together," The New York Times, January 9, 2016. Retrieved July 5, 2023.Jones, Sam. "Sundance short film competition invites innovative development stories," The Guardian, April 25, 2014. Retrieved July 5, 2023.

Work and public reception Myers's art centers on how different elements—visual symbols, fabric patterns and paper fragments, words, narratives—are put together, rather than on the particulars of materials, objects or mediums.Zhang, Lisa Yin. "Christopher Myers: The Hands of Strange Children," TheGuide.Art, March 30, 2022. Retrieved July 3, 2023. This approach creates a common thread across his work, from the visual patchworks of collaged illustrations and appliqué tapestries to the conceptual juxtapositions of cultures, myths, stories and experiences in his books, plays and artwork. Collaboration with communities and artisans (e.g., textile, glasswork, shadow puppet or instrument makers) around the world also plays a key role, enabling him to connect seemingly isolated geographies, histories, data points, generations and identities, while questioning the traditional narrative of the sole artist.National Gallery of Art. "Artist Christopher Myers Considers What It Means to 'Matter,'" Stories, 2021. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Miranda, Carolina. "Christopher Myers meditates on escape in textile works at Fort Gansevoort," Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2019. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Blaffer Art Museum. "Christopher Myers: of all creatures that can feel and think," 2023. Retrieved July 5, 2023.

Artwork

Tapestries Tapestries have figured significantly in Myers's art. The brightly colored, intricately patterned work draws upon influences including the innovative Quilts of Gee's Bend and simple cutouts of Henri Matisse, the figurative work of Jacob Lawrence, and global regional forms.Tancons, Claire. "Ten Best of 2018," Artforum, December 5, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2023.Cascone, Sarah and Goldstein, Caroline. “Editors' Picks: 17 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week," Artnet, September 10, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2023. His exhibitions at The Mistake Room (2017, Guadalajara) included collaborations with Vietnamese embroiderers on images inspired by Lil Wayne rap songs and the "Vxllrncgnt" project—mural-like flags for imaginary nations made from 70-year-old Egyptian sails that were influenced by the colonial history of flags created by the Ghanaian Fante people.The Mistake Room. "Christopher Myers: Flags of No Nation," 2017. Retrieved July 5, 2023. Myers's tapestries notably mix dissonant modes of tradition—an intimate, quotidian and "warm, folksy art form"—and critique, chronicling difficult narratives, involving, for example, Confederate monuments, slavery, police violence or climate crisis.

Myers's titled his 2019 exhibition at Fort Gansevoort, "Drapetomania", referencing a supposed and debunked 19th-century pseudoscientific theory that posited enslaved Africans' impulse to escape bondage as a mental illness. Los Angeles Times critic Leah Ollman wrote that its monumental tapestries "conceive a kind of emblematic space, part proclamatory banner, part illusionistic window to the world. The most affecting works visualize some sort of existential reckoning, a claiming of place, voice, liberty." What Does It Mean To Matter (Community Autopsy) (2019) was a 14-foot wide group portrait of nine recent victims of police violence, each a silhouette in umber, crimson or ochre cloth modeled after coroners' autopsy sheets and embellished only with yellow and red shapes marking the bullet wounds that killed them. In his 34-foot textile mural, Sarah Forbes Bonetta as Omoba Aina as Persephone (2021), Myers depicted the diasporic dislocations of a 19th-century Yoruba princess (Bonetta) who was orphaned and enslaved in a regional war, given to the British as a diplomatic gift, raised as Queen Victoria's ward, and finally married to a wealthy industrialist. The tapestry's layered analogies connect her hybrid identity to colonial history and the Greek goddess Persephone, who was given away to Hades, god of the underworld.

Sculpture

Myers's sculpture similarly explores cross-cultural and trans-historical narratives and links.Yablonsky, Linda, "Bright Prospects," Artforum, October 31, 2014. Retrieved July 3, 2023.Stromberg, Matt. "Palm Springs Takes a Stance Against Desert X Biennial’s Partnership With Saudi Arabia," Hyperallergic, February 24, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2023. The mixed-media collaboration Echo in the Bones (2014, Prospect.3) examined grief rituals in Vietnam and New Orleans connected through the global tradition of jazz. It combined photographs, a Saigon–New Orleans jazz funeral march and re-imagined, fantastical brass instruments and costumes created by Myers that were used in a film by the Vietnamese collective The Propeller Group.Steinhauer, Jillian. "Best of 2014: Our Top 10 Exhibitions Across the United States," Hyperallergic, December 26, 2014. Retrieved July 5, 2023. In his Desert X installation, The Art of Taming Horses (2021), Myers collapsed the forgotten histories of Mexican and African-American cowboys in a fictional story of two ranchers told through vibrant, mythic tapestries and large-scale steel horse sculptures.Walker, Ronnie. "Six Sculptures Pay Homage to Forgotten Cowboys of Color," KCET, May 4, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2023. Both projects featured elements fabricated by artists and craftspeople from around the world, complicating the work with considerations of cultural exchange, authorship and identity.

In other sculptures, Myers has combined resonant objects and materials (e.g., figurines, ink, a face cage, microscopes) to evoke and transform trauma. Shackle and Light (2019) consisted of a thick metal collar encircling the neck of a featureless, carved wooden head with extending rods that housed dozens of periodically lit candles, transforming a symbol of oppression into a flickering chandelier signifying resistance.

Stained glass