Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Germane Barnes, Migration Column III, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Germane Barnes, Identity Column III, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Germane Barnes, Identity Column III (detail), 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Germane Barnes, Labor Column II, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at Art Institute of Chicago, 2024. Photo by Nathan Keay.

Columnar Disorder

Germane Barnes is the Director of Studio Barnes, a research and design practice that investigates the connection between architecture and identity.

Artist Bio

In Germane Barnes’s first solo museum exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Barnes reflects on the enduring legacy of the Classical orders—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—whose distinctive columns continue to proliferate in our built environment today, upending these long-standing conventions by reimagining architectural orders as rooted in Black experience, history, and values. Centered on the design of three new columns, The Identity Column celebrates the Black body and beauty, the Labor Column considers how slavery fueled American economic growth, and the Migration Column—a meditation on the intercontinental journeys of enslaved Africans—recognizes water as a site of Black memory, loss, and selfhood.

Discipline
Architecture & Design, Social Practice
Award Year
2022
Status

In Progress

Themes

Creative Capital Carnival 2022

Germane Barnes’s Columnar Disorder was previously titled Restructuring Blackness. 

Events

Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder

September 21, 2024–January 27, 2025

Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603

A Black man with a baseball hat on his head, wearing a pink fur coat and pink teeshirt. He is sitting on a ladder with his feet on a roll of foam. Behind him is a commercial hydraulic lift.

Germane Barnes

Miami, FL

Germane Barnes is the Director of Studio Barnes, a research and design practice that investigates the connection between architecture and identity. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences Black domesticity. His design and research contributions have been published and exhibited in several international institutions. Most notably, The Museum of Modern Art, The Graham Foundation, Pin-Up Magazine, The New York Times, Architect Magazine, DesignMIAMI Art Basel, The Swiss Institute, Metropolis Magazine, Curbed, and The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise.

Events