Painter Winfred Rembert Posthumously Wins a Pulitzer for His Memoir – RisePEI

In a rarity, two artists received Pulitzer Prizes this yr alongside a slew of acclaimed writers, journalists, and critics.

The painter Winfred Rembert, who died in 2021, posthumously received within the biography class for his memoir Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, which was co-authored with Erin I. Kelly.

In the meantime, Raven Chacon, a participant within the present Whitney Biennial, received within the music class for his composition Unvoiced Mass.

Chasing Me to My Grave, which was revealed final yr, particulars Rembert’s experiences with racism and the U.S. jail system, and explores how he got here to his signature strategy of portray and carving leather-based, a medium that he grew to like whereas he was incarcerated. Kelly, an instructional who teaches at Tufts College, labored with Rembert to show his spoken reminiscences into this guide. In poetic and sometimes piercing element, Rembert recounts being lynched by a mob and miraculously surviving, being made to carry out jail labor, and being enchanted by art-making comparatively late in his life. The works he produced had been the topic of a survey held at New York’s Fort Gansevoort gallery final yr.

The guide is “a searing first-person illustrated account of an artist’s life throughout the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties in an unreconstructed nook of the deep South—an account of abuse, endurance, creativeness, and aesthetic transformation,” in accordance with an outline for Rembert and Kelly’s award. The prize comes with $15,000.

It’s the first time a biography about an artist has received within the class since 2005, when Mark Stevens and Analynn Swan received for his or her acclaimed guide on Willem de Kooning.

Chacon’s Unvoiced Mass was carried out on Thanksgiving of final yr on the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “As an Indigenous artist, I make some extent to not current my work on this vacation, however on this case I made an exception,” wrote Chacon, who’s an enrolled member of the Diné nation. It consists of an organ and an ensemble, and it performs on the ways in which cathedrals amplify sound within the hope of “giving voice to the unvoiced, when ceding area is rarely an choice for these in energy.”

Within the quotation, the Pulitzer Prizes known as the piece “a mesmerizing, authentic work for organ and ensemble that evokes the load of historical past in a church setting, a concentrated and highly effective musical expression with a haunting visceral impression.” The award additionally comes with $15,000.