At Schaulager, Steve McQueen and Christina Sharpe are joining in a conversation to reflect on "Bass" and its resonance: how it anchors us in the present moment and how it speaks to memory and history.

At Schaulager, Steve McQueen and Christina Sharpe pick up on a conversation that began in February 2024. Invited to contribute to the publication Steve McQueen: Bass (2024), they first discussed the work while it was still in progress. Now, more than a year later—after its presentation at Dia Beacon and currently on view at Schaulager—they return to Bass to reflect on its resonance: how it anchors us in the present moment and how it speaks to Black life, memory, and history.

With Bass, the acclaimed artist and Academy Award–winning filmmaker continues his practice of foregrounding overlooked and neglected histories. Working masterfully with light, color, and sound, he explores what can unfold when our physical perception of space and time is altered. Award-winning writer and scholar Christina Sharpe, in turn, examines Black life across literature, film, visual arts, and the everyday in her work. Her deeply intimate, historically grounded thinking moves between individual experience and broader social structures—without reducing one to the other. This approach resonates with McQueen’s practice, which challenges racialized ways of seeing and feeling history while bringing neglected stories into view.

Christina Sharpe is a writer, Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is also a Research Associate, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg. Sharpe is the author numerous publications.

Over the past two decades, British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen has acquired an outstanding reputation for his work. Major museums worldwide have devoted exhibitions to his award-winning œuvre.