The second title in the Clarion series spotlights the artist Nikita Gale, whose multimedia work applies the lens of material culture to examine the role authority plays in political, social, and economic systems.

Immersing the audience in sound and light, Nikita Gale’s END OF SUBJECT subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker’s site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the space, stimulating all senses, and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution.

With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale’s multidisciplinary approach in addressing historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition.

About Clarion
The Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

About The Authors

Nikita Gale

Born in 1983 in Anchorage, Alaska, Nikita Gale received a BA from Yale University in 2006, and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2016. Gale also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine, in 2019. In 2022, Chisenhale Gallery, London, presented Gale’s first European solo exhibition. The artist has had other notable solo exhibitions and commissions at institutions such as LAXART, Los Angeles (2022); the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2021); Anchorage Museum, Alaska (2021); MoMA PS1, New York (2020); The Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin (2019); Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2018). Gale is represented by 56 Henry, New York; Reyes|Finn, Detroit; and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. The artist resides and works in Los Angeles.

Andrea Fraser

Andrea Fraser is an artist whose work investigates the social, financial, and affective economies of cultural institutions, fields, and groups. She is Professor and Interdisciplinary Studio Area Head at the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Art.

Harmony Holiday

Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, archivist, and the author of five collections of poetry, including Hollywood Forever (2017) and Maafa (2022). She has received the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a NYFA fellowship, a Schomburg Fellowship, a California Book Award, and a research fellowship from Harvard.

Product Details

Publisher: David Zwirner Books/52 Walker (March 7, 2023)
Length: 96 pages
ISBN13: 9781644230749

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Raves and Reviews

“..,foregrounds Gale’s innovative light, movement, and sound work.”

– Vogue

“And while Gale’s light-and-sound show echoes hard, the display finds a true force in its omissions, inhibitions, and Gale’s refusal to be reduced.”

– Art-Agenda

“These concepts culminate most cohesively in the series ‘Body Print’ (2022): medium-sized paintings on aluminum lining the gallery walls. There are no bodies figured in these tableaux, only their traces: prints and marks that smudge and indent the surfaces. In fact, nothing is added to the aluminum boards, only removed through grooves made by Gale.”

– Frieze

“END OF SUBJECT, a rigorous and thought-provoking piece that challenges traditional means of engaging with art, institutional spaces, and one’s physical presence.”

“It’s in the iconoclasms of Gale’s work, where aluminium, spotlights, and bleachers seem to function as the leftover mediators between performer and audience, that layers of technology remove some intimacies while magnifying others.”

– Spike Art Magazine