The examination and analysis of race and the role of art in portraying race and citizenship in the United States is on show at the New York edition of Frieze Art Fair 2021.

On display at the art fair that began on May 5 are works from sixty leading galleries paying tribute to social justice with artistic expressions by the world’s most influential artists.

Central to the theme of race and social change is the 2016 issue by Aperture magazine, The Vision & Justice Project, an assessment of photography in the African American experience. Frieze New York pays tribute to this project by expanding the reach of the Vision & Justice Project, in order to give potential new audiences access to a visual literacy that could change the way they see the world.

The experience as planned by Freize will take the form of digital events, artworks, institutional contributions, and special screenings. As a starting point, participants were asked the question: ‘How are the arts responsible for disrupting, complicating, or shifting narratives of visual representation in the public realm?’

"For the past year, so many of us have not only seen the pandemic, but also the incredibly important Black Lives Matter movement," said Rebecca Ann Siegel, director of content at Frieze. "This really felt like a moment to pay tribute to some work that is so resonant with today's issues."

According to Frieze New York website, as part of the Tribute, Aperture will launch The Vision & Justice Book Series, co-edited by Sarah Lewis, Leigh Raiford, and Deborah Willis, with the lead support of the Ford Foundation, that will extend the work of the award-winning 2016 ‘Vision & Justice’ issue in reexamining and redressing historical narratives of photography, race, and justice. 

It further stated that “what distinguishes this series is that it is deliberately corrective, addressing past omissions, contributing to the ongoing work of telling a richer, more racially inclusive story of photographic histories. Each volume will present essential voices who were not always recognized in their time, or during the early stages of their careers, but whose work across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has had an immense impact on the history of the medium and on modern and contemporary culture at large.”

Another highlight of the program is an online screening of HBO documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light, directed by Sam Pollard and inspired by the extraordinary impact of David Driskell’s landmark 1976 exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art. It will serve as a preamble to the work of some of the foremost African American visual artists working today.

The annual Frieze art fair, held in London, New York, and Los Angeles, usually features about 190 contemporary art galleries.