{"id":673,"date":"2021-05-13T08:44:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T00:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=673"},"modified":"2021-05-11T15:47:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T07:47:34","slug":"sean-kierre-lyonss-flower-warriors-and-cracker-flags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/sean-kierre-lyonss-flower-warriors-and-cracker-flags\/","title":{"rendered":"SEAN-KIERRE LYONS\u2019S FLOWER WARRIORS AND CRACKER FLAGS"},"content":{"rendered":"

If, in the winter of 2017, you had walked along Gates Avenue\u2014which stretches from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, to Fresh Pond, Queens\u2014you would have found its midpoint conspicuously marked by a version of the Confederate flag. The migrator<\/span>y art gallery Housing, then located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had recently installed Sean-Kierre Lyons\u2019s\u00a0Drop in Water<\/i>\u00a0(2017) in its storefront window. Like most of Lyons\u2019s works, the flag was a piece of Civil War\u2013era<\/a> paraphernalia with a twist, as if someone, somewhere along the way, had seized the means of production and then freaked it. Premium brand saltines were glued to a wooden backing, slicked with resin, and detailed in white and blue acrylic paint. Displayed as part of a group show that also included works by Parker Bright and Isis Swaby, the flag was intended as a visual pun: the crackers might put crackers on blast, but Lyons didn\u2019t intend for anyone to feel hurt.\u00a0Drop in Water<\/i>, however, was a signifier with a life of its own: eventually, someone threw a brick. The window shattered, but the crackers remained intact\u2014that is, until the work was moved into the building\u2019s basement for storage, where it was eaten by rats.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most vexed historical symbols are destined to meet one of two fates: either they are elevated to the status of totems by those who insist on their endurance, or they are swept into archives and curiosity cabinets, where they are regarded as the cursed vestiges of a shameful past. Excavating malign reminders of the antebellum South, Lyons suffuses collective memory with childlike whimsy. During a recent studio visit, the self-taught artist\u2014who was born in Salinas, California, and raised in Brooklyn\u2014told me that whenever an emblem is sentenced to the annals of history, \u201cthere\u2019s life behind it, somewhere else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Resurrections are not necessarily endorsements. Lyons\u2019s works that evoke the afterlife of the Confederacy are winking, even crass. The artist\u2019s portraiture, on the other hand, is celebratory. Every drawing included in \u201cIn Battle Petals Fall,\u201d their 2020 solo exhibition at Fortnight Institute in the East Village, looks like a party. Facial features are derived from the hyperbolic aesthetics of minstrelsy, but seem a little more real, more intimate\u2014despite the fact that eyes and teeth double as pistils and stamens, crowned with a psychedelic weave of petals. Lyons calls the colored-pencil<\/a> figures \u201cflower warriors,\u201d and each is derived from a loved one: a friend, a housemate, their dad. Were the renditions not so spot on, it would be tempting to call them avatars. (During our studio visit, Lyons showed me a drawing of a figure made up entirely of clouds, in which I immediately recognized their studio mate, Precious Okoyomon.) Each brandishes accessories like absurdist armor: a vine becomes a jump rope; a white hood, absent its body, is toted like a bag of found treasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n
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\"Sean-Kierre<\/div>\n<\/div>
View of Lyons\u2019s exhibition \u201cMmhhmm,\u201d 2019,
\nat Larrie, New York.<\/span>COURTESY LARRIE, NEW YORK<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Before Lyons turned to drawing last year, they tended to work in sculpture. \u201cMmhhmm,\u201d their 2019 solo show at Larrie on the Lower East Side, featured a new cracker flag, this time with the coiled rattlesnake and DON\u2019T TREAD ON ME<\/a> inscription from the Gadsden banner, as well as an immersive Astroturf-lined installation populated by plush objects wearing affable expressions. Ladybugs, flowers, and even a pack of Newports wore sewn-on lips curled into vacant smiles, and little humanlike figures dressed in bunny suits bore grins so large they might be mistaken for grimaces. If encountered individually, the items might look like interlopers from the land of misfit toys. But viewed together, and accompanied by the flower warriors, they are clearly transplants from another realm, where even hints of pain are expressed through the coy aesthetics of cuteness, and repose is a battle stance in disguise. \u201cIf you come off as a whimsical bitch,\u201d Lyons told me<\/a>, \u201cpeople are really surprised when you turn up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The sculptures and drawings belong to a single ongoing narrative, detailed in a notebook that describes a world populated by flower warriors who live in harmony with their evolving environment. Alongside ladybugs and humanlike creatures, they harvest sustenance from the earth. Inevitably, there are villains\u2014in this case, wasps named after Confederate generals\u2014but when a flower warrior dies, everyone helps to usher in new life. \u201cThese characters were made without our permission,\u201d Lyons said, referring to the imagined traits and habits of Black life that were codified into minstrelsy. Cultivating the thwarted lives sentenced to death in the archive is \u201ca way of honoring them, and giving these entities a way to exist where they can live their lives out, and have more than just shaking their hands and tap dancing. They can defend themselves now, and they have families.\u201d The flags, humanoids, and flower warriors are not the ephemera of a lost history, but the building blocks of an alternate present, where \u201ceverything is a Black figure, and everything has consciousness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If, in the winter of 2017, you had walked along Gates Avenue\u2014which stretches from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, to Fresh Pond, Queens\u2014you would have found its midpoint conspicuously marked by a version of the Confederate flag. The migratory art gallery Housing, then located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had recently installed Sean-Kierre Lyons\u2019s\u00a0Drop in Water\u00a0(2017) in its storefront window. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nSEAN-KIERRE LYONS\u2019S FLOWER WARRIORS AND CRACKER FLAGS - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If, in the winter of 2017, you had walked along Gates Avenue\u2014which stretches from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, to Fresh Pond, Queens\u2014you would have found its midpoint conspicuously marked by a version of the Confederate flag.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/sean-kierre-lyonss-flower-warriors-and-cracker-flags\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SEAN-KIERRE LYONS\u2019S FLOWER WARRIORS AND CRACKER FLAGS - 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