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Beverly Buchanan, Weathering, with Ima-Abasi Okon. Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, 2 October 2025-1 February 2026

Curated by Anna Gritz, Beatrice Hilke, Pia-Marie Remmers
Monica Manolescu

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1Weathering is the first exhibition devoted to African American artist Beverly Buchanan in Germany, at Haus am Waldsee, a center for contemporary art in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district. Buchanan’s work has recently been shown in two other exhibitions: a solo exhibition in Switzerland, entitled I Broke the House, at ETH Zurich (2024), and a group exhibition in the United States, at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, TX, called Groundswell: Women in Land Art (2023-2024).

2The focus of the Berlin exhibition is on Buchanan’s interest in “weathering,” a term that characterizes an artistic practice of site-specificity which has become common in Land Art since the end of the 1960s (the works erode on sites where and for which they were made) and defines an interest in a general condition of distress and change that encompasses the built and the natural environment. “Weathering” also refers to the act of creation itself, in particular the recuperation of detritus and weathered materials (stones, wood, scraps of metal). The exhibition sheds light on Buchanan as an artist who has “weathered the storm” and whose work has recently gained in visibility, thus emphasizing the role of curators and institutions in renewing art historical narratives and bringing lesser-known artists to public attention. The exhibition booklet also insists on “weathering” as an accumulation of traces left by the violence of history (23, available here).

3Both floors of the villa of Haus am Waldsee were used to showcase Buchanan’s work across media: paintings, sculptures, assemblages made of found material, video, photographs, printed matter, and oral interviews. Beverly Buchanan’s work was set in dialogue with contemporary British artist Ima-Abasi Okon (born in 1981), who was commissioned an original work for the exhibition. Inside the museum, Okon created an environment using pollen, which covers the walls in yellow layers (Fig. 1) and the smell of which, though subtle, follows the visitor along the exhibition itinerary. Given the fact Buchanan suffered from asthma, the smell of pollen becomes part of a sensory experience of the exhibition environment and an invitation to embodiment which is not without potential risk. Okon also designed a path through the park surrounding the villa, down to the lakeshore.

Fig. 1: Installation view, Beverly Buchanan. Weathering, with Ima-Abasi Okon

Fig. 1: Installation view, Beverly Buchanan. Weathering, with Ima-Abasi Okon

Haus am Waldsee, 2025

Photograph by Julian Blum 

4Buchanan died ten years ago (1940-2015) after a career that took her from North Carolina to New Jersey, and then back to the South, in Georgia. She was born in Fuquay, North Carolina, studied medical technology and biology (in particular parasitology and public health), then became a social worker in Upper Manhattan and in East Orange, New Jersey, before moving to Georgia in the 1970s to devote herself exclusively to her art (Fig. 2). As a child, Buchanan grew up on the campus of South Carolina State College, where her father was dean of the School of Agriculture. He took her along various trips across South Carolina, where she observed the landscape, rural architecture, and met with people from various communities. In an oral interview dating from 1990 that one can listen to and also read in transcription at the Haus am Waldsee exhibition, Buchanan mentions the fact that as a child and teenager she was fond of “making things” from available materials, and this double focus on “making” and “things” is a constant of her work. In 1971, Buchanan enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where she studied painting with Norman Lewis, artist of the Harlem Renaissance and proponent of abstract expressionism, who was a member of the 306 group and co-founder of the Harlem Artists Guild. Through Lewis, she met Romare Bearden, the African American artist who founded the Spiral group of artists with a focus on civil rights in New York in the 1960s, and who helped her exhibit her art in New York galleries, for instance at the Cinque Gallery, which promoted the work of Black, Asian, and Hispanic artists.

Fig. 2: Beverly Buchanan, Self-Portrait in Mirror on Konica, 1976

Fig. 2: Beverly Buchanan, Self-Portrait in Mirror on Konica, 1976

B/w photography, 15×10 cm

Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

5Buchanan’s work as a painter embraced both abstract expressionism and figurative painting using pastel. In the exhibition, an example of the former is Black Wall (1977), which was inspired by her being exposed to neglected New York buildings. Architecture represents a major source of inspiration for her repertoire: walls, sculptures that look like fragments of buildings, shacks, public monuments. A text by Buchanan explains the genesis of the painting, from a series of visions to the actual encounter with a black wall in SoHo, with epiphanic overtones. The specificity of her abstract work lies in its firm grounding in her experience of distressed architecture, with underlying connotations of poverty and decay. Buchanan’s first abstract paintings used color to suggest wall surfaces. Although not explicitly presented by the artist as such, the “black wall” can be read as a representation and as a token (that is, a material example) of the living conditions of African Americans, and the forms of existential closure to which they were submitted. As a whole, Buchanan’s work is primarily concerned with the habitat and life narratives of the African American communities in the South. Her abstractions (such as Black Wall) are dense, materially thick, marked by scratches and patterns of use, as if weathered by its inhabitants. Abstraction is embedded in an implied representation of individual and social dwelling in contexts of wear and economic distress. Abstraction becomes a texture of entropy that results from observing or inhabiting run-down accommodation, or from walking along streets with no restorative hope.

  • 1 See Baum for an analysis of artists in New Jersey from the 1950s to 1975.

6I would like to argue that we should consider the vast difference between Buchanan’s Black Wall and Gordon Matta-Clark’s experiments with walls or floors made in New York more or less at the same time (Walls; Bronx Floors; Walls Paper, all made in 1972). They share a concern with architectural ruination and unbuilding, but their gestures and visions invite different framings. Matta-Clark (trained as an architect at the Department of Architecture at Cornell University) emphasized the splitting of buildings and the undoing of architectural forms, whereas Buchanan’s “walls” should be understood in relation to her job as social worker with a background in medicine and parasitology visiting underprivileged areas. There is no indication that the two met or were aware of each other’s work. I would like to trace a similar parallel (rather, a tangential and delayed choreography) between Buchanan’s New Jersey itineraries and the trips performed in New Jersey by artists canonically associated with Land Art, such as Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, throughout the 1960s, to quarries, natural reserves (the Pine Barrens) and small towns such as Passaic1. Buchanan started working as a public health educator in East Orange in 1969 (McArthur and Burris Staton 12). Again, there is no evidence of encounters between Buchanan and this group of Land artists, and their artistic genealogies are distinct. While such comparisons can be quickly dismissed because they bring us back to well-known artists who dominate canonical narratives of 1960s and 1970s art, they allow us to point out the much larger constellations of artists, practices, and genealogies of the era, and the limitations of existing retrospective frameworks of Land Art and postminimalism.

7Buchanan’s sculptures in the postminimalist tradition (notably the series of Frustula) mimic fragments of the built environment. The term “frustulum” (literally, a fragment) also designates, in biology, the structural casing of a cell wall. The artist used cast concrete and milk molds to manufacture them (Fig. 3). As serial fragments reminiscent of bricks or slabs, they are expected to function as units and construct larger architectural ensembles or organic structures, but they remain scattered and fail to cohere, as fabricated cells that lie on the ground and signify as discarded pieces that do not belong anywhere anymore, although they carry a potential of being reintegrated in larger structures. In the gallery, they lie on the floor, but versions of them evocative of ritual stones were sometimes left by Buchanan in natural sites. Although they look like ready-made bricks and found objects, the “frustula” are actually made by the artist, suggesting agency, the imperfection of hand fabrication, and a very limited seriality.

Fig. 3: Beverly Buchanan, Frustulum, 1979

Fig. 3: Beverly Buchanan, Frustulum, 1979

Color photography, 33×23 cm

Courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

8In 1977, Buchanan moved to Georgia to become a full-time artist. She started exploring the vernacular architecture of the South, in particular the wooden shacks. The continuity with her previous work is clear in the sense that her interest in architecture is redeployed in a distinct geographic and cultural context (that of her childhood), using different kinds of dwellings, moving from the black walls and “frustula” to the shacks. In terms of technique and approach, some paintings of shacks display vibrant colors that recall her previous abstractions (Fig. 4).

9The shacks are assemblages made of wood, metal, and found objects. Their sizes vary, from tiny ones (the size of a bird house, see Fig. 5) to life-size ones, which invite one to enter and experience their spare and narrow interiors, such as Shack South. Inside & Out (1990). Many of the shacks, such as Shack South, are accompanied by legends, some quite extensive, reading as artist statements that comment on her experience of the shacks, the functionality of their various features, the objects they contain (or don’t contain), and the relationship between individuals and the community as configured by the shacks. Shack South projects an outside, with the yard seen as an extension of the interior, forming a concentric inhabited universe. The effect is one of gradual contextualization and growing attention to layers or scales of situatedness. There is a drive towards narrative, oral history, and critical reflection in Buchanan’s artist statements that accompany these assemblages, showing her commitment to understanding the experience of living in the shacks, and to conveying the connections between the inhabitants and their dwellings. The shacks suggest poverty, but also the creativity of makeshift improvisation and the agency of the inhabitants who adopt an attitude of continual reinvention and everyday transformation of the structure. As Buchanan put it in an interview, “I want to give people who can neither read nor write but made all the measurements and built their own barns and shacks a different way of looking at themselves. My fascination is with buildings and ruins. But there’s more fascination with life and its positive aspects” (Flomenhaft and Buchanan).

10Buchanan’s shacks can be considered in relation to Louise Nevelson’s sculptures made of wood and other discarded urban materials (recently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, from April 9 to August 10, 2025), but Nevelson’s are much neater, polished, and stable, lacking the impression of imminent collapse. Another assemblage artist that comes to mind is Noah Purifoy, whose structures are more heterogeneous and difficult to pin down referentially, lacking the architectural unity and consistent identification of Buchanan’s shacks.

Fig. 4: Beverly Buchanan, Lamar County, GA, 2003

Fig. 4: Beverly Buchanan, Lamar County, GA, 2003

Oil pastel on paper, 56×76 cm

Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

Fig. 5: Beverly Buchanan, 7 Houses, 1997, background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025, Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025

Fig. 5: Beverly Buchanan, 7 Houses, 1997, background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025, Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025

Photograph by Julian Blum

11In 1980, Buchanan was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in order to create the site-specific installation Marsh Ruins (one of her most ambitious works) on the marshes of Glynn, on the coast of Georgia (completed in 1981, see Fig. 6). A slideshow of the artist book devoted to this environmental sculpture and to its making is presented in the exhibition. As Amelia Groom argues in her book-length study, the work resists categorization, although it invites connections with Land Art and postminimalist sculpture, which it reconfigures and recontextualizes in the South, within the history of slavery (Groom 2021). The ruins consist in three mounds of concrete cast by the artist, covered in tabby, a building material used on Southern plantations, made of oyster shells, sand, lime, ash, and water. Making tabby is labor-intensive, an activity that was performed by enslaved people, documented by Buchanan in her zine Making Tabby for Brick Sculptures (which I haven’t had access to, but which is mentioned by Aurélie Bernard Wortsman, director of the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York). The work is close to Igbo Landing, on Saint Simons Island, the site of a collective suicide by Igbo people who had survived the Middle Passage and refused the condition of enslavement. The marshes of Glynn are also the subject of a 19th century-poem of the same title by Sidney Lanier, poet and Confederate veteran who extols their beauty but silences their brutal history. These references and landmarks suggest that Marsh Ruins is inscribed in the discourses and cultural geographies of slavery, as a response and memorial. The mounds are not signaled explicitly as works of art, but blend in the grasses and water of the tides, eroding slowly. Their suggestiveness is implicit and subdued in the history of the site, as a haunting recollection of lost lives and the violence of slavery.

Fig. 6: Beverly Buchanan, Marsh Ruins, 1981

Fig. 6: Beverly Buchanan, Marsh Ruins, 1981

Colour photograph, 9×13 cm

Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

12The most overtly political work in the exhibition is Church on Fire (fig. 7), made in 1995-1996. It is a red shirt that Buchanan wore while working on her art, and on which she made crosses in white paint to mark a series of African American church burnings taking place across the South. The shirt is a living memorial testifying to the violence and destruction taking place in Buchanan’s home area, worn as a reminder of current events. Buchanan’s concern for the African American community is displayed in embodied form. The cross is both a religious sign and the sign of a target: Buchanan herself as potential target, in solidarity with the affected communities.

Fig. 7: Beverly Buchanan, Church on Fire, 1997. Background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025. Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025

Fig. 7: Beverly Buchanan, Church on Fire, 1997. Background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025. Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025

Photograph by Julian Blum

13Two zines by Beverly Buchanan were printed and made available for purchase on the occasion of the exhibition: The Artist – a Visual Journey (ca. 1997) and Lila’s Story (2001). Their lighter, occasionally comedic mode counterbalances the dark, austere stances of her walls, “frustula” and ruins. The zines illustrate her talent for writing and her interest in stories, narratives, and self-performance.

14The exhibition gives a sense of the scope, diversity, and elusiveness of Buchanan’s practice. It also allows the viewer to grasp its powerful grounding in the geography and history of the South.

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Bibliographie

BAUM, Kelly, ed. New Jersey as Non-Site. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum/Yale University Press, 2013.

BERNARD WORTSMAN, Aurélie. Beverly Buchanan. Northern Walls and Southern Yards. Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, 2023. www.edlingallery.com/attachment/en/5c0eb470a5aa2c3c608b4567/TextTwoColumnsWithFile/6408fcf8f56c9bec73027040. Accessed 31 October 2025.

FLOMENHAFT, Eleanor, and Beverly BUCHANAN. “Interview with Beverly Buchanan.” 1993. www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1144. Accessed 31 October 2025.

GROOM, Amelia. Beverly Buchanan. Marsh Ruins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021.

MCARTHUR, Park, and Jennifer BURRIS STATON. Beverly Buchanan’s Artist. Mexico City: Athénée Press, 2015.

Exhibition booklet. Beverly Buchanan, with Ima Abasi-Okon. Weathering. Berlin: Haus am Waldsee, 2 October 2025-1 February 2026. hausamwaldsee.de/files/HAW_Booklet_Beverly-Buchanan.pdf. Accessed 31 October 2025.

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Notes

1 See Baum for an analysis of artists in New Jersey from the 1950s to 1975.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1: Installation view, Beverly Buchanan. Weathering, with Ima-Abasi Okon
Légende Haus am Waldsee, 2025
Crédits Photograph by Julian Blum 
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 68k
Titre Fig. 2: Beverly Buchanan, Self-Portrait in Mirror on Konica, 1976
Légende B/w photography, 15×10 cm
Crédits Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 34k
Titre Fig. 3: Beverly Buchanan, Frustulum, 1979
Légende Color photography, 33×23 cm
Crédits Courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 56k
Titre Fig. 4: Beverly Buchanan, Lamar County, GA, 2003
Légende Oil pastel on paper, 56×76 cm
Crédits Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 106k
Titre Fig. 5: Beverly Buchanan, 7 Houses, 1997, background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025, Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025
Crédits Photograph by Julian Blum
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 27k
Titre Fig. 6: Beverly Buchanan, Marsh Ruins, 1981
Légende Colour photograph, 9×13 cm
Crédits Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 81k
Titre Fig. 7: Beverly Buchanan, Church on Fire, 1997. Background: Ima-Abasi Okon, Sex, 2025. Installation view Beverly Buchanan. Weathering with Ima-Abasi Okon, Haus am Waldsee, 2025
Crédits Photograph by Julian Blum
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27742/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 47k
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Monica Manolescu, « Beverly Buchanan, Weathering, with Ima-Abasi Okon. Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, 2 October 2025-1 February 2026 »Transatlantica [En ligne], 2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 20 janvier 2026, consulté le 16 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/27742 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15i3g

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Monica Manolescu

Université de Strasbourg, SEARCH / USIAS – University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study

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