Germane Barnes: Columnar DisorderThe Art Institute of ChicagoThrough January 27Its difficult to remember much about columns from architecture history class. There are three main ordersDoric, Ionic, Corinthianthough some expand the lineup to five with the addition of Tuscan and Composite. (Im not Googling this right now.) Its hard to recall as time has passed and my synapses have weakened, but also because the columns meaning has changed. Encountering a building lined with decorated motifs chiseled in stone is no longer a moment to appreciate Greco-Roman ideals. Instead we have to confront meanings that are, today, more abstracted: Consider the lil Twitter trad boys whose Grecian avatars are rambling on about symmetry and Donald Trumps insistence that federal buildings should be beautiful againmeaning, European again. By returning to such styles, we could transport ourselves, as the fantasy goes, to a time when the problems of modernity werent in the room with us. No longer are columns structural elements of engineering; their presence demonstrates the chasm of our political binaryred tick for yes, blue for no. The column, and all its baggage, registers ones icky allegiance to tradition. Germane Barnes complicates this discourse in Columnar Disorder, his first solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). Barnes, who leads his own studio and directs the graduate architecture program at the University of Miami, spent his year as a Rome Prize recipient revisiting historic buildings and ruins; his studies of columns have yielded a very different takeneither allegiance nor engineering. Instead, Columnar Disorder, curated by Irene Sunwoo, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design, considers the African diaspora as a foundational history of Western European civilization. Through collages and sculptural works, he presents a revision of the classical column, omitting the Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian designations and substituting his own: Migration, Identity, and Labor. By offering up a fresh vision for classical design, hes quietly upending the boisterous discourse of time-traveling conservatism; rather than attending to the divisions between us, hes considering the column as an object that binds us together.Installation view of Germane Barnes: Columnar Disorder at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2024.Located in the AICs Architecture & Design galleries, the exhibition includes three sets of three individual works; each work bears one title of Barness Migration, Identity, and Labor designations. There is one group of small-scale collages, a trio of small-scale column sculptures that sit on pedestals in the gallerys center, and finally, three large-scale columns (appearing as half-round pilasters) on the gallerys north wall. Three other large-scale collages act as a conceptual anchor, providing a referential footnote to the remainder of the exhibited work. By grouping these three sets, Barnes constructs a physical space to explore his themes of migration, identity, and labor with various materials and at different scales. This strategy smartly relays a conceptual framework for his three column typologies by mimicking broader design process: A collage might represent an early design sketch, while the smaller scale sculptures speak to a prototype, and the final forms are executed at 1:1 scale. Across the exhibition, Barnes presents a precise interpretation of these themes: Migration addresses the forced removal of African peoples under slavery, as well as the broader patterns of African migration to Europe; labor speaks to use of chattel slavery to construct many of the buildings and sites associated with classicism; identity refers to notions of beauty. In his large-scale pilasters, which are arguably the exhibitions centerpieces, these themes manifest literally via distinct materials. The Labor column, fabricated by Quarra Stone Company, appears to be in mid-disintegrationperhaps a nod to the attempts to erode public discourse that pins slave labor as foundational to the countrys economic and civic history. The Identity column, a collaboration with Chicago-based fibers artist Shenequa Brooks, is made from synthetic hair and beads referencing familial traditions of hair braiding. Migration, a wood column produced by Navillus Woodworks, speaks to the slave ships that carried stolen people across the sea.Designed by Germane Barnes, fabricated by Navillus Woodworks. Migration Column III (detail), 2024. Courtesy of the artist.Its notable that the sculptures were created in collaboration with other artists and fabricators. In a conversation held for the exhibitions public opening that included architect and author Mabel O. Wilson, moderated by Lisa akmak, AIC curator of Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, Barnes spoke about why these relationships were so essential. Architecture wants you to be the single author, the person who does the napkin sketch, and you get all [the] accolades, he said. Thats not how I was raised. I was raisedif you didnt bring home food for everybody, you had to eat in the car. Collectivity and togethernessthe us of it allis embedded in the exhibition.Designed by Germane Barnes, fabricated by Endicott. Labor Column II, 2024. Construction was generously provided by skilled union masons with the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Administrative District Council 1 of Illinois with support from the International Masonry Institute. Courtesy of the artist.Germane Barnes and SHENEQUA. Identity Column III, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.For diasporic peoplesand speaking as one, myselfthe deep connections that run through family and community are embedded in survival and identity, yet the sense of us is also, at times, fraught. In his Labor collage, Barnes centers an image of a young Black child sporting a backpack with the Glovo logo (UberEats, in Europe). In the conversation, he noted that when he was in Italy, he observed the difference between himself, an American, and the African migrants, many who arrived there as refugees. Every time I would see another Black person, it would be a migrant who was typically delivering food or [doing] some other sort of low level labor. Over there, I was American. Over there, I wasnt Black, he said. Yet even though he was perceived as American, these solidarities still exist, even abstractly. Throughout his three large collages, Barnes uses Berber script to annotate his drawings, paying homage to the North African migrants who came to southern Italy. He also explained that the AIC conservators discovered that the paper he had printed and drawn these collages uponthe low-quality stuff that usually covers cafe tables in Italywas composed of recycled paper, including old photographs. Theres a metaphor in there: to use a material made up of old remnants with a new projection of Blackness drawn on top of it. Togetherness, then, becomes not just a matter of what is shared interpersonally, but what is shared temporally.Germane Barnes. Pantheon II, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Nina Johnson. (Greg Carideo/ Germane Barnes)I doubt Barnes had Trumps voice echoing in his head as he produced these drawings or designed his thematic columns; hes not on X arguing with the trads, either. So while some of his representations of identity, labor, and migration feel, at times, quite literal, theres something refreshing about shaking off the pastthe domain of bow-tied architectural history professorsand the present, too, to offer up well-known objects with wholly new meanings. We can find ourselves, and find a life-giving community, in relics. I hope the exhibition, which runs until the end of this month, acts as an invitation for visitors to take on such daunting work themselves, to reexamine divisive objects and reimagine them as temporal links to one another.Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment.