What sound does a sculpture make? That is one of the many synaesthetic questions the artist Jennie C. Jones conjures in her new commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof garden, Ensemble (until 19 October). Her stark, powder-coated aluminium menhirs use stringed instruments as experiential analogues for Black contributions to the cultural canon, expanding the Hudson Valley-based artist’s longstanding interest in animating minimalist abstraction with sonic life.
The Met rooftop installation is only Jones’s second large-scale outdoor project. The first, These (Mournful) Shores, a 2020 creation she originally designed for the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, uses the seascapes of Winslow Homer as a portal to the Middle Passage, the route enslaved people endured on their journey from Africa to the “New World” across the Atlantic Ocean. The Aeolianharp-inspired work featured in Ensemble draws on the poetic precedent of These (Mournful) Shores; Aeolian harps, by definition, are played by the wind and do not require musicians to activate them. Visitors must get in close to the sculpture to hear what it has to say.
“The [Met] rooftop really is a bit of non-architecture because it’s a stage,” says artist Jennie C. Jones Hyla Skopitz; courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
In addition to the commission at present on view at the Met,Jones is also showing new works on Alexander Gray Associates’ stand at Frieze New York.
The Art Newspaper: When you received the Metropolitan Museum commission, what were some of your immediate pragmatic concerns? How were you initially thinking of transforming your practice in the context of an outdoor rooftop space?
Jennie C. Jones: My initial thought was that it’s clearly going to offer an opportunity to continue the piece that I made at the Clark, because it was my first ambitious outdoor work. But secondly, I really did have a moment when I was overwhelmed with the archive, with this site, with this location, being on top of thousands of years of art history. At the end of the day, I pivoted away from going down those rabbit holes, although I did start to try to pick that apart.
I was revisiting Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum, and I was thinking about the institution. I decided to stay the course with what I’ve been doing for 30 years and try to keep that tactile subtle energy.
How were you conceiving of sound elements for an outdoor space?
I kept making jokes that I’m an inside cat, and I felt that way at the Clark too. The main entry point was that the Met has its musical-instruments department, which I’ve gone to many, many times over the years. This cacophony of silence and the sonic imagination of wondering what all of these instruments would sound like emerged from that place. So that was another entry point into the piece being about absence and presence, about activation and things that have sonic potential but still can hold space as objects. So that became important.
Jennie C. Jones tapped into a “tactile subtle energy” while creating her new installation for the Met’s rooftop Joshua Franzos
Immediately, the curator David Breslin referenced Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field —that one photograph that I’ve seen in history books since I was an undergrad, which is a magic moment. That kind of work involves anticipation, that yearning and hopefulness that something will happen. The large piece has sung a couple of times, but it’s not going to be a consistent thing, and I like that. I like that they can do all these things at the same time, these three pieces up there.
Could you talk about the way that stringed instruments are functioning as conduits to visual art in Ensemble?
The residue of my first reaction—which was to the collection as a whole, the multitude of cultures and objects in that space on the whole—really had me looking back at old-school art history. I know we’re in this moment now whenencyclopaedic museums are feeling like they have to change their methodology and how they present work, but I connected it to time and music. There’s something in linearity that’s so clear and so accessible I really hope that we don’t lose, because it creates a reality where music history, art history and Black history are about time writ large. That sort of linear connection, metaphorically, is there. It’s absolutely not overt, because you’re basically looking at stringed sculptures, but it was another way of thinking about how linearity works in the studio practice, how these strings are also connective tissues between points and cultures.
What is the philosophy of the audience in your practice?
I have anxiety about the expectation of Black performativity, that those outside sculptures are going to be performing and active and doing something, because that’s also a part of the expectation of Blackness. To that end, the rooftop really is a bit of non-architecture, because it’s a stage. It’s like a plinth. It’s on top of everything, with the skyline in the background. I don’t really know about audiences.
For the Met, I was more generous with my research and how I build things conceptually, how it might look like there are variations on a theme over time. Maybe I don’t consider audience anymore as much as some might.
• The Roof Garden Commission: Jennie C. Jones, Ensemble, until 19 October, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
