Nanette Carter: Afro Sentinels

Nanette Carter: Afro Sentinels brings together recent examples of the artist’s painterly and material explorations along with new sculptural works commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Reflecting the profound history of abstraction by African American artists, Carter’s work bears the influences of many artistic, art historical, and cultural expressions, from quilt making and jazz to Abstract Expressionism, Japanese prints, and Russian Constructivism.
 
Carter’s career began in the 1970s. Over time, following the lead of her mentor Al Loving, an African American painter of geometric abstraction who in the 1970s had pivoted to creating dramatic compositions made of cut and torn paper and canvas, she began testing and using unconventional materials. In the 1990s Carter began using Mylar, an industrial polyester film. Since then, she has focused on the possibilities this material offers—working with transparency, experimenting with color and form through physical layering, and placing works directly on the wall without frames.
 
For Carter, these abstract works reflect a world marked by violence, social unrest, political upheaval, and the invasive presence of media in everyday life. She explains that her work concerns “the drama of nature in tandem with the drama of human nature.” The idea of balance, a counterweight to this impending sensation of collapse, is equally important. The titles of some of these paintings or series—including Cantilevered, Destabilizing, and Shifting Perspectives—suggest this concern.
 
Carter’s new Wex-commissioned works, a continuation of the Afro Sentinels series, push her investigations further into three-dimensional space. She explains that this new work “speaks to the seismic changes that we have experienced over the past decade; whether we are looking at climate change, lack of civility, a global pandemic… it has been a most destabilizing time.”