Renée Green facts for kids

Renée Green (born October 25, 1959) is an American artist, writer, and filmmaker. She uses many different types of art, like sculptures, photos, videos, and websites. Her works often come together in big, detailed art setups called installations.

Renée Green studies culture and history for her art. This makes her projects very well-researched. She often works with other people. Some topics she has explored include Sarah Baartman, the history of the African slave trade, and hip hop music in Germany.

In 2014, Green published a book called Other Planes of There: Selected Writings. It brought together many of her writings from 1981 to 2010.

Early Life and School

Renée Green studied art at Wesleyan University. She also spent a year at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Later, she attended a publishing course at Harvard University. In 1989, she joined a special program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

For her college thesis, Green wrote about art criticism. She looked at how both Black and White critics wrote about art from the 1920s to the 1960s. A big influence on her was helping to organize Sol LeWitt's art collection. She wrote descriptions for artworks by Adrian Piper and Lawrence Weiner.

Her brother is Derrick Green. He is the lead singer of the heavy metal band Sepultura.

Her Art Projects

Color I (1990) at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Renée Green creates detailed art setups. In these, she explores ideas, historical events, and stories. She also looks at cultural items from many different angles. Her art examines what people think in private and public. It also looks at what has been imagined or created.

Her videos, exhibitions, and films have been shown all over the world. They have been seen in museums and festivals. A scholar named Alexander Alberro says Green's goal is not to teach. Instead, she invites people to help build knowledge. She wants to change how we see things. Green often makes interactive spaces. These spaces encourage viewers to be equal partners in understanding the art.

Green explains why she collects and shows different materials. She says she starts by looking at an object or place. This could be a painting, a book, or a garden. By doing this, she can see how certain ideas work. She tries to understand the mixed feelings that might come with them.

In 1992, Green worked with the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. They created Mise-en-Scene: Commemorative Toile. This artwork shows how she uses old images to rethink history. She wanted to draw attention to how history is presented. For this work, she mixed traditional 18th-century fabric scenes. These scenes usually showed peaceful country life. But Green added violent images of slavery and rebellions. For example, flower designs framed pictures of a lynching during the Haitian revolution. They also showed an enslaved Black man kneeling by a white man's desk. Green used this fabric to make rooms that looked like museum displays. She used it for chairs, drapes, and wallpaper. She changed these traditional styles to tell different historical stories.

Green collects many materials for her projects from our culture. But her work is more than just a collection of items. In each project, she creates new art in different ways. She uses photography, prints, films, and sound. These are all part of her carefully designed installations. Because she carefully chooses and gathers materials, her work is sometimes called "archival."

Her projects often take place over time and in different places. The same theme might be shown in various ways. For example, Import/Export Funk Office (1992) was an installation in Cologne and Los Angeles. It also became a CD-Rom in 1996. Another project, Code: Survey (2005–2006), is a public artwork in Los Angeles. It also exists as a website for everyone to see.

Green's projects are very detailed and complex. So, she uses the exhibition catalogs as part of her art. These books work in many ways. They are exhibition guides and also artist's books. They hold documents, conversations, and film scripts from her projects.

In 1997, Green was chosen to design a book called Artist/Author: Contemporary Artist's Books.

Green has also written many essays and stories. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals in the United States and Europe. Some of these include October, Texte zur Kunst, and Transition.

Her video works are often subtle. For example, her video Climates and Paradoxes (2005) looks at Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. It explores the history of a tall apartment building in Berlin where Green once lived. This building was on the site of a peace organization. Einstein was a member of this group.

Walking in NYL (2016) shows Green's interest in Lisbon and Portuguese culture.

Since 2011, Green has had many solo art shows. These include shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the MAK Center in Los Angeles. She has also been part of many group shows. These include exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Green has created many books and writings over the years. Some of her books include Other Planes of There: Selected Writings (2014) and Endless Dreams and Time-Based Streams (2010). Ongoing Becomings (2009) showed 20 years of her work.

She has also written many essays and stories for magazines. These include Frieze, Spex, and Multitudes.

Art Projects in Detail

Here are some of Renée Green's projects.

Green thought about how Black women's bodies were shown in history. She focused on Sarah Baartman, known as the "Hottentot Venus." Baartman was a South African woman shown in London and Paris in the early 1800s. Three of Green's early artworks about this were Permitted (1989), Sa Main Charmante (1989), and Seen (1990). They were shown together in her 1990 exhibition, Anatomies of Escape.

Sa Main Charmante (Her Charming Hand, 1989). This artwork features a soapbox with footprints. It sits in front of a ladder-like structure on a wall. The ladder has two texts about Sarah Baartman. One describes her performances. The other was written by Georges Cuvier after he studied her body after her death. These texts are mixed up, interrupting each other. Cuvier's text gives the artwork its name. Even though he compared Baartman to animals, he noted "her charming hand." Next to the soapbox is a bright light and a peepbox. The peepbox shows an old French print of Europeans looking at the "Hottentot Venus." The light also shines on the viewer looking into the box. This shows how viewers were part of these degrading displays.

Seen (1990). This artwork builds on Sa Main Charmante. It uses mixed texts about Sarah Baartman's performances. It also includes texts about the famous dancer Josephine Baker. Baker's voice singing "Voulez-vous de la canne" plays in the background. You can read these texts on the slats of a wooden platform. This platform looks like the simple structures used to display and sell slaves. Viewers walk up a short stair to reach it. Once there, a spotlight shines on them. Their shadow is cast against a screen. Motorized, winking eyes look at them through a hole in the floor.

Import-Export Funk Office (1992). This project maps how hip hop music and culture moved between New York City, Los Angeles, and Cologne. Green explored how cultural products, especially hip-hop, travel internationally. She acted like an artist-ethnographer. She studied hip-hop culture through a German writer, Diedrich Diederichsen. Green questioned ideas about cultural trade. She showed differences in how culture is made and sold. Her collection of cultural pieces challenged using culture without historical context.

Mise-en-Scène (1992). This project looked at how French cities like Clisson and Nantes were involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Green put traditional fabric scenes next to images of violence against Haitian slaves.

Secret (1994). Green lived in an apartment designed by Le Corbusier. She took photos and videos of her time there.

Partially Buried in Three Parts (1995–1997). This work starts with Robert Smithson's land art piece, Partially Buried Woodshed (1970). Green uses it to examine student protests in the United States. She focuses on the Kent State shootings. She also looks at the student massacre in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1981. This is also known as the Gwangju Democratization Movement. The art installation shows the year 1970 from different viewpoints.

Some Chance Operations (1999). This is a film about the Italian filmmaker Elvira Notari.

Elsewhere? (2002–2004). The film Elsewhere? was made for an art installation in a garden in Kassel. It explored the idea of imaginary places. It also looked at the history of gardens and garden buildings. In 2003, Elsewhere? was shown in Frankfurt. There, 1400 colored names of imaginary places covered the walls.

Muriel's Words (2004). In this sound installation, Green softly whispers parts of poems by Muriel Rukeyser. Rukeyser was an American poet and activist. Phrases like "it is their violence" are read quietly. It feels like you are secretly eavesdropping on someone reading from a private journal.

Endless Dreams and Water Between (2009). For this project, Green created an immersive space. Through drawings, sound, banners, and films, she explored ideas of islands. These could be real islands or mental ones. In a film with the same name, fictional characters write to each other. They talk about historical figures like George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. They also explore the long histories of places like Mallorca, Manhattan, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Begin Again, Begin Again (2015). This exhibition was held at the former home of architect R.M. Schindler in Los Angeles. It showed ten years of Green's old and new artworks. These works traced how different things move through time and space. The exhibition aimed to create a "circulatory experience." All parts of the art combined to "perform" the Schindler House. Begin Again, Begin Again (Circulatory Sound) (2015) features a deep voice. It is her brother, Derrick Green, from the band Sepultura. He says "begin again, begin again." The main piece was Begin Again, Begin Again I. 1887–1929 (2015). This video mixed images of the house with old footage, ocean tidal scenes, and other buildings. Green later showed fabric banners from this exhibition in 2016.

Begin Again, Begin Again (Years) (2018). Green showed Begin Again, Begin Again at the FRIEZE exhibit in New York in 2018.

Cinematic Migrations Project (2014). From March 6–7, 2014, Green presented this two-year project. She worked with John Akomfrah and Lina Gopaul. This project explored the idea of "migrations" in relation to "the cinematic." It allowed for many questions and interpretations to come up.

On September 24, 2019, Green presented Pacing. This two-year project at Harvard University focused on the Carpenter Center's design by Le Corbusier. Green looked at ideas of moving and staying in one place. She also explored institutional memory, personal experiences, and modern architecture. She considered how time appears and the certainty of decay. Green always tries to find new ways to work within institutions.

As an Educator

Teaching has been a very important part of Renée Green's career. She has been a guest teacher at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program since 1991. From 1996 to 1997, she was the Director of their Studio Program. From 1997 to 2002, she was a Professor in Vienna. In 2003, she moved back to the United States. She became a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 2005 to 2011, Green was a Professor and Dean at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has also taught at Yale University and other art schools.

Awards

In 2010, Green received a United States Artists Fellow award.

In 2021, Green won an Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Other artists who won that year included Coco Fusco and Dyani White Hawk.

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See also

In Spanish: Renée Green para niños