Michael Werner Gallery, London is pleased to present Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World, celebrating the Dominican-born British writer Jean Rhys (b. 1890 in Roseau, Dominica, d. 1979 in Devon, England). This large-scale group exhibition is conceptualised and curated by esteemed American, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and curator Hilton Als.
Conceived as a collective portrait of Jean Rhys, including paintings, drawings, and books, Postures explores not only the destabilising force of difference, but the ways in which Empire affected the Creole world Rhys was born into, and never forgot. As a significant presence in post-colonial writing, Rhys offered, in sui generis prose, a view into lives and cultures that had hitherto been marginalised, or ignored, by European male writers. So doing, Rhys' powerful evocation of her native Dominica, and Jamaica in her master work, Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966, inspired writers Jamaica Kincaid, Derek Walcott, and Caryl Phillips - all of whom are represented in Postures - to write about their own relationship to the places in the Caribbean where they were born and partly raised.
Working in tandem with Rhys' texts, the artists included in Postures explore the interior and exterior worlds Rhys evoked with her pen: a world in which politics is not inseparable from the ways in which women live their lives.
The exhibition traces Rhys’ biography, as well as the varied geographies that informed her life and work. Born in Dominica to a Welsh father and a third-generation Creole mother of Scots ancestry, Rhys grew up a white person, or Creole, in a largely Black society. After leaving Dominica as a teenager in 1907, Rhys led a nomadic life. She lived variously in the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands, but she always returned to Dominica, at least in her imagination. It remained the wellspring of creative invention during her entire life.
Rhys published her first short story collection, The Left Bank and Other Stories, in 1927. In that text, Rhys established her voice: lyrical, laconic and knowing, describing what it meant to be a woman living in exile, and at the whim of powerful men.
After the publication of her novel Good Morning, Midnight in 1939, Rhys sank into obscurity. Wartime Britain – let alone France and the United States – had no room for stories about national disillusionment and disenfranchisement. Rhys' last and best-selling novel Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966. Feminists and scholars of Caribbean and English literature championed her resurgence, and Rhys was lauded as a master by the time of her death in 1979, by which time she had been awarded a number of honours, including The WH Smith Literary Award, and the Royal Society of Literature Award.
Artists include: Kai Althoff (b. 1966), Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965), Eugène Atget (b. 1857, d. 1927), Georg Baselitz (b. 1938), Cecil Beaton (b. 1904, d. 1980), Herbert Bell (b. 1856, d. 1946), Hans Bellmer (b. 1902, d. 1975), Brassaï (b. 1899, d. 1984), Marcel Broodthaers (b. 1924, d. 1976), Agostino Brunias (b. ca. 1730, d. 1796), Mariana Cook (b. 1955), Somaya Critchlow (b. 1993), Brett Goodroad (b. 1979), Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965), Gwen John (b. 1876, d. 1939), Per Kirkeby (b. 1938, d. 2018), Leon Kossoff (b. 1926, d. 2019), Florian Krewer (b. 1986), Cynthia Lahti (b. 1963), Eugène Leroy (b. 1910, d. 2000), Sarah Lucas (b. 1962), Nathanaëlle Herbelin (b. 1989), Victor Man (b. 1974), Alice Neel (b. 1900, d. 1984), Celia Paul (b. 1959), Francis Picabia (b. 1879, d. 1953), Walter Price (b. 1989), Winold Reiss (b. 1886, d. 1953), Andy Robert (b. 1984), Kara Walker (b. 1969) and Rebecca Warren (b. 1965).
Hilton Als (b. 1960 in New York) is an American writer, critic, and curator. His first book, The Women, was published in 1996 and his second book, White Girls, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. Als has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for over 30 years and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for theatre criticism in 2017. Als has curated numerous exhibitions at leading international museums and galleries.
Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World continues a series of expansive exhibitions curated by Als exploring towering literary figures, including Joan Didion: What She Means at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2022 and the Perez Art Museum in Miami in 2023, and The Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 2024.
Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World will open to the public on 12 September, with a private view on 11 September from 6-8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through 22 November. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm.