Breath/Breadth: Contemporary American Black Male Identity, explores wide-ranging visual expressions, defying the impulse to hone in on singular, cohesive definitions because it is precisely the impulse to categorize that encourages racial profiling. While focusing on a particular demographic, Breath/Breadth demonstrates the complexity of this demographic. Artists include Radcliffe Bailey, Kevin Beasley, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, Todd Gray, Barkley Hendricks, Rashid Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Toyin Odutola, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Breath/Breadth aims to be intentional about revealing diversity, while also making reference to recent racial strife embodied in the concept of “breath” as it refers to the now very charged quote “I can’t breathe” resonating with the current dialogue over how we identify and value black lives. At the same time, our collective concept of breath is poetic and meditative, ultimately common, life-sustaining, non-racial.