Freestyle Exhibition

Freestyle was a contemporary art exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem from April 28-June 24, 2001 curated by Thelma Golden with the support of curatorial assistant Christine Y. Kim.

The latter is a term she generated along with artist Glenn Ligon as a genre of art "that had ideological and chronological dimensions and repercussions.

"[1] Freestyle was her first major project at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the first of an ongoing series of 'F' themed exhibitions including Frequency, Flow and Fore.

[2] She also curated the Whitney's 1994 Black Male exhibition, thinking of the black male as a subject through the works of a multi-cultural roster of artists and the 1998 Bob Thompson exhibition, which she described as being "the first major survey of a mid-century African-American artist in a long time.

Her vision for The Studio Museum in Harlem was a place where-in exhibitions would allow space for critique and questions to be explored.

[4] The artmakers of "Freestyle" experimented with digital media and sound as well as culture-specific materials like hair pomade and curling papers to explore social, political, sexual and ethnic issues.

From painting and drawing to sculpture, installation and new media, the work reveals the artists' exposure to both Eastern and Western thought.