Modern Spotlight: Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson’s sculpture To Die Upon A Kiss (2011) takes its title from the final lines spoken by Othello in William Shakespeare’s play. Set in sixteenth-century Venice, Othello traces the Black general’s path to a tragic fate. Invited to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Wilson took inspiration from the many people of African descent who appear in artistic depictions of Venetian life across the centuries, figures whose first-person accounts remain absent from the historical record. He collaborated with glassblowers on the Venetian Island of Murano to create elaborate chandeliers using black glass, titling each after a line from Othello’s closing monologue.

The Modern Spotlight series premieres works from the MoMA collection as part of an ongoing collaboration with MoMA PS1.