Cameron Rowland
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Cameron Rowland (born 1988) is an
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
conceptual artist whose work has been exhibited internationally and acclaimed for its structural analytic approach to addressing issues of American slavery,
mass incarceration Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceratio ...
, and
reparations Reparation(s) may refer to: Christianity * Restitution (theology), the Christian doctrine calling for reparation * Acts of reparation, prayers for repairing the damages of sin History *War reparations **World War I reparations, made from G ...
. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University in 2011 and they were awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019 after several solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art,
Kunsthal Aarhus Kunsthal Aarhus is a contemporary arts centre located at the heart of the city of Aarhus in Denmark. The institution initiates, commissions, produces and presents art at an international level to local, regional, and international audiences. Kuns ...
, and
La Biennale de Montreal La Biennale de Montréal (BNL MTL) is a bi-annual multidisciplinary arts event to confront the Quebec and Canadian art with those of foreign artists around common issues and concepts corresponding to ''"the timeliness of the art"''. Founded in 1 ...
. Rowland is noted for their distinct method of loaning some works to collectors and institutions rather than selling them outright, an approach meant to mirror the experience of low-income people shopping at
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stores like Rent-A-Center and disrupt the traditional value structure in the contemporary art market.


Biography

Cameron Rowland was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1988. They became known for their conceptual art addressing social injustice in contemporary society and displaying ready-made objects that are obtained through abstruse economic exchanges. After their exhibitions at Essex Street gallery in 2014 and MoMA PS1’s Greater New York show in 2015 their work gained a wider audience. They spoke at the graduation ceremony of their alma mater Wesleyan University in 2019. Rowland lives and works in Queens, New York.


Art practice

Rowland's artwork focuses on critiquing systems and institutions that perpetuate or benefit from racial injustices. Many of the objects Rowland uses for their artwork derive from online government auctions and scrap yards, from decommissioned municipal buildings and manufacturers of commercial security apparatuses. These objects are often overlooked by society, but serve a very important purpose in everyday life. For example, one of their works includes manhole leveler rings, which are used to adjust the height of manhole covers when roads are paved. These rings, which few would recognize, are one of the major products manufactured via inmate labor in the New York State prison industry, and are indispensable fixtures of urban infrastructure. Other works of theirs use such objects as wooden desks and wooden benches manufactured by prison laborers for far less than minimum wage. Rowland encourages museums not just to show work about marginalized communities but actually do something about how they live. Rowland is an example of an artist who is able to place conditions the terms of collection for their work. In some instances, collectors are only allowed to rent, not own, particular works. In a correspondence between the artist, their dealer, and an anonymous collector, published by ''Parse'', Rowland explained that the rental model echoes the experiences of people shopping at stores like Rent-A-Center, where service fees and inflated prices often cost customers much more than if they had been able to purchase the item upfront. The lending model for Rowland represents a restructuring of value in the art market and an examination of the exchange of capital between artists and collectors. Since 2015, Rowland has made about half of their works available in this manner. Rowland's 2019 show at Art Basel in
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was their first show that solely presented works circulated under this model.


''D37''

''D37'', shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA) in 2018 and 2019, was one of Rowland's largest solo exhibitions. Rowland uses artwork budgets and research to reveal Los Angeles’ role in the violent displacement of the poor and people of color. Bunker Hill, the site of MoCA, is a historically
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and
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neighborhood marked area “D37”, hence the name of the exhibition. It was assigned the lowest Security Grade by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation ( HOLC) in 1939, and HOLC’s Residential Security Map calls Bunker Hill “a slum area and one of the city’s melting pots”. HOLC changed into the Federal Housing Administration and guided the Los Angeles CRA to attempt to cover up its violence through artificial acts of community service. Rowland focuses on these instances of legally sanctioned racism through D37, unveiling the very mechanisms of a government that makes its own rules to justify its own injustices. The gallery consisted of carefully selected objects seized by police under civil asset forfeiture that resonate of past ownership. These include used bikes, two leaf blowers, and a one green stroller. Another work, ''Assessment'' (2018), which is a late eighteenth-century grandfather clock from Paul Dalton Plantation in South Carolina, stood at the end of the gallery. Also included were property tax receipts on slaves and other owned goods from Mississippi and Virginia that show how these slave states profited and relied on black bodies to build their infrastructure and governments. The gallery closed with ''Depreciation'' (2018), which consists of a series of legal documents and contracts that show Rowland’s usage of ''D37’s'' budget. They used part of the money to acquire one acre of land on Edisto Island, South Carolina to restrict the land and devalue it, and indicates that the current value is $0. They do this because of an empty promise placed on the area in 1865, which stated that slaves would receive forty acres and a mule, which included Edisto Island. The initiative was rescinded in 1866 by President Andrew Johnson. In 2023, the Dia Art Foundation announced it had entered into a long-term loan agreement with Rowland and the nonprofit the artist had created to purchase the land on Edisto Island; Dia agreed to steward the land and showcase the exhibition documents as part of its permanent collection. Unlike the other traditional
land art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mov ...
that is in Dia's collection or under Dia's stewardship, the land involved in ''Depreciation'' is not accessible to the public, a purposeful choice by the artist to restrict any usage of the land.


''91020000''

Rowland also exhibited the show ''91020000'' at the
Artists Space Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...
in
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in 2016. The title is derived from Artists Space’s customer account number with Corcraft, a company that manufactures affordable commodities to sell to government agencies, schools, and non-profit organizations, like Artists Space. Rowland purchased four courtroom benches made of oak, a particle board office desk, and seven cast aluminum manhole rings through a partnership with Artists Space. These objects were laid across the presentation space, leaving the viewer to observe without knowing their significance until they pick up the paper accompanying the work which tells them the objects were made by the cheap labor of New York State’s prison inmates. Rowland interprets the prison labor force to be a practiced form of neo-slavery that continues to thrive in our present economy. In Rowland’s essay explaining the work, they explicate how the 13th Amendment made it possible to incarcerate ex-slaves for vagrancy, allowing private companies and later state governments to exploit prisoners’ free labor. They also explain how a similar tactic was used during the War on Drugs in the 1970’s, and since then the country has seen a massive rise in incarceration, especially among African Americans. Rowland approaches their role as an artist to be like an investigative reporter,  seeking out intellectual, factual, and material evidence to support their written claims. They also assume the role of active consumer by taking ownership of the objects as a form of antagonism. They reclaim these objects that are markers of corrupt history, stripping the objects of their use-value, and positioning them as relics of structural racism. A work included in the show is ''Disgorgement'' (2016), which is a contractual agreement. Similar to how Rowland used some of ''D37''’s budget, they used some of the budget from the show to purchase $10,000 worth of the insurance company Aetna’s shares, which held slave insurance policies for slave owners prior to the abolition of slavery, planning to hold onto the shares until the US government makes financial reparations for slavery, at which time the shares will be liquidated toward the payment of
reparations Reparation(s) may refer to: Christianity * Restitution (theology), the Christian doctrine calling for reparation * Acts of reparation, prayers for repairing the damages of sin History *War reparations **World War I reparations, made from G ...
.


Notable works in public collections

*''Handpunch'' (2014-2015), Hessel Museum of Art,
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,
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; and Whitney Museum,
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*''Disgorgement'' (2016), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''Insurance'' (2016), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''Insurance'' (2016),
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*''National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association Badges'' (2016), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''New York State Unified Court System'' (2016), Museum of Modern Art, New York (Work rented to museum, at cost) *''Payroll'' (2016), University of Chicago Booth School of Business Art Collection *''Jim Crow'' (2017), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh *''2015 MOCA REAL ESTATE ACQUISITION'' (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles *''Assessment'' (2018), Tate, London *''Depreciation'' (2018), stewarded by Dia Art Foundation,
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*''Group of 11 Used Bikes - Item: 0281-007089'' (2018), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (Work rented to museum, at cost) *''Stihl Backpack Blower - Item: 0514-005983'' (2018), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (Work rented to museum, at cost) *''probability of escape'' (2020),
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*''Lynch Law in America'' (2021), Art Institute of Chicago


Awards

Rowland was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow in 2019.


Exhibitions

Rowland has staged a number of solo shows at galleries and museums, including ''Bait, Inc.'' (2014), Maxwell Graham Gallery,
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; ''91020000'' (2016),
Artists Space Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...
, New York; ''D37'' (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; ''3 & 4 Will. IV c.73'' (2020), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and ''Amt 45 i'' (2023), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. Rowland has also participated in a large number of group exhibitions, including
La Biennale de Montreal La Biennale de Montréal (BNL MTL) is a bi-annual multidisciplinary arts event to confront the Quebec and Canadian art with those of foreign artists around common issues and concepts corresponding to ''"the timeliness of the art"''. Founded in 1 ...
(2016); Whitney Biennial (2017);
São Paulo Art Biennial The São Paulo Art Biennial (Portuguese: ''Bienal de São Paulo'') was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale (in existence since 1895), which serves as ...
(2018); and ''
Afro-Atlantic Histories ''Afro-Atlantic Histories'' (Portuguese: ''Histórias Afro-Atlânticas'') is the title of a touring art exhibition first held jointly at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil in 2018. The exhibition is made ...
'' (2021-2023).


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowland, Cameron Rowland, Cameron Living people 21st-century American artists Wesleyan University alumni 1988 births 21st-century African-American artists American contemporary artists African-American contemporary artists American conceptual artists