The Armory Show 2020: Focus: Jamal Cyrus

For the Focus section of the 2020 Armory Show Jamillah James, curator of Focus, posited "I wanted to offer an open proposition: What is the function of truth now? How much agency do we have, as individuals or communities, in narrating our own experiences?" In Jamal Cyrus' Pride Frieze-Jerry White's Record Shop, Central Avenue, Los Angeles (2005-2017), altered album cover collages create the storefront façade of a shop selling albums produced by the fictional Pride Records. Cyrus has been appropriating and altering record covers since 2005 to speak about the role and power of music in aiding social movements, and his fictionalized Pride Records underscores the suppression of that art form. Pride Frieze will be accompanied by works in which specific histories embed themselves within material and abstraction. Cyrus's most recent works, for example, translate redacted civil rights era FBI documents into denim, a material that references quilting as well as the clothing worn by SNCC activists. Cyrus' presentation will be in Booth F10, Pier 90.