3D Design

Senga Nengudi: Topologies by Stephanie Weber; Matthias Muhling; Anna Staetmans The publication accompanies the first solo exhibition of Nengudi in Germany at the Lenbachhaus, Munich. Among the bodies of work presented in the book are the Water Compositions (1969-70), interactive vinyl and water sculptures that Nengudi understood as an organic rebuttal to the reign of Minimalism; early fabric works that Nengudi strung up in the back alleys of Harlem, New York; the suggestive R.S. V.P. sculptures (1976-today), some of which were activated in choreographed performances.

Senga Nengudi by Begum Yasar (Editor); Ellen Tani (Text by); Bradley Rizvana (Text by); Jessica Brown (Text by) In the 1970s, Colorado-based artist Senga Nengudi (born 1943) worked in Los Angeles as part of an emerging community of African American artists that engaged with multiple radical political movements underway in the US and around the globe, including the Black Power and feminist movements. Using quotidian materials to create installations, sculptures, performances and videos, these artists were key participants in the emergence of a postminimal aesthetic. This volume features Nengudi's recent nylon mesh pantyhose and sand sculptures that respond directly to her performative, biomorphic series R pondez s'il vous pla t (RSVP) (1975-77). Engaging in a dialogue with both postminimalism and second-wave feminism, the stretched, twisted and knotted fabric of the RSVP works and more recent Reverie sculptures recall contorted flesh. Nengudi's corporeal sculptures, which often suggest genitalia and breasts, take on feminist associations as "part-objects" (to use psychoanalyst Melanie Klein's term) in the absence of adjoining bodies.