Unseen Structures: A Review of Germane Barnes’ “Columnar Disorder” at the Art Institute of Chicago
BY
Germane Barnes is an associate professor and the director of the Community, Housing and Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture. The Chicago-born architect is well-versed in peeling back the layers of place to contextualize and make tangible hidden histories embedded in materiality. Barnes’ practice excels at revealing what’s truly there but perhaps not seen: past installations, such as “Ukhamba,” a ten-foot tall enclosure that evoked the structural form of a traditional African-woven wooden basket at the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, bridge the space between commentary and utility, raising questions of attribution, labor and identity.
All of these dynamics are on display in “Columnar Disorder,” his first exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Here, an entire room of the Art Institute’s Architecture and Design gallery is dedicated to Barnes’ recontextualization of classical columns—ionic, doric and Corinthian—to confront the impossibility of detaching architecture from the cultural and labor exchanges that shape it. He reorders these classical forms to be more reflective, representative and expressive of the intermingling of cultures that produce them, emphasizing the absence of cultural influence and material imprint from the African diaspora.
What if ionic, doric and Corinthian columns—literal pillars of social mores and power—centered on labor, identity and migration—three critical aspects of the Black experience already embedded, if not made manifest, in their shape? Barnes poses this question in materiality: brick to represent labor, hair to symbolize identity, and wood to signify migration. The column, he suggests, is an inadequate form of support until it fully illustrates the complexities of its historical context.
“Columnar Disorder” serves as a reminder that architecture is never about form; it is about expression, agency and voice. By reimagining these empirical forms, Barnes emphasizes that until we develop a new conception of classicism, nothing is elemental.
“Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder” is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan, through January 27, 2025.
