Raúl de Nieves, The Fable, which is composed of wonders, moves the more, 2021. Fiberglass, plastic, cultured pearls, metal, glass, glue, and resin, 95 × 29 × 65 inches (241.3 × 73.7 × 165.1 cm). Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor. Courtesy Company Gallery, New York. © Raúl de Nieves
Raúl de Nieves, The Fable, which is composed of wonders, moves the more (detail), 2021. Fiberglass, plastic, cultured pearls, metal, glass, glue, and resin. 95 x 29 x 65 inches (241.3 x 74 x 165.1 cm). Courtesy the artist and Company Gallery, New York. © Raúl de Nieves
The artist’s first presentation in Boston features a new body of work exploring themes of memory and personal transformation
(Boston, MA—August 11, 2021) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents a solo exhibition of New York-based interdisciplinary artist, performer, and musician Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Michoacán, Mexico), whose multifaceted practice ranges from stained-glass-style narrative paintings to animated performances, to densely adorned figurative sculptures encrusted with bangles, beads, bells, sequins, and other everyday materials. These opulent, joyful sculptures reference traditional costumes in Mexican culture and modes of dress from drag, ballroom, and queer club cultures, while also evoking religious processional attire and the outfits worn by circus performers. All of his works share a distinctive visual language that draws from Mexican craft traditions, religious iconography, mythology, and folktales to explore the transformational possibilities of adornment and the mutability of identity. For the ICA, de Nieves has created The Treasure House of Memory, a body of interconnected works that are rooted in memory and explore themes of personal transformation. On view September 1, 2021 through July 24, 2022, Raúl de Nieves: The Treasure House of Memory is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
“This exhibition grew out of Raúl’s desire to look within himself—at his experience, past work, recurring themes—to chart a self-possessed way forward in his life and work. The Treasure House of Memory reflects on a question in the title of one his works: Who would we be without our memories? As in all of his work, Raúl answers through ornately beautiful, life-affirming artworks,” said De Blois.
The Treasure House of Memory begins with a freestanding, three-panel painting—in the style of a room divider—depicting Saint George and the Dragon. The legend, in which the saint mounted on horseback slays a dragon who, demanding constant tributes, terrorizes a village, is a motif de Nieves regularly revisits. Nearby, a beaded sculpture with two contorted, interlocking bodies with horse heads appears to emerge from the painted scene; a process of transformation that develops in three subsequent figurative sculptures in various states of becoming a horse.
Who Would We Be Without Our Memories—a large, tapestry-like collage—is a narrative map composed of cut-up facsimiles of de Nieves’s early tarot-inspired drawings and postcard reproductions of well-known works from art history, which are built up in dimensional layers. At the center of the installation is The Fable, Which Is Composed Of Wonders, Moves The More, a life-size, riotously colorful, and symbolically expressive freestanding sculpture of a horse. Rearing up on its hind legs—a pose, read at times as defensive, while at other times as a means of communicating dominance—The Fable stands here as a beautiful body uncontained and fully actualized, the triumphant realization of the process of transformation that plays out between the interconnected sculptures.
A large-scale, portal-like circular collage points back out to a larger world, seen anew. The Treasure House of Memory expands the artist’s inventive adaptation of iconographic traditions through vibrant combinations of form and material in an energetic and accessible visual language.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Support for Raúl de Nieves: The Treasure House of Memory is provided by First Republic Bank.
Additional support is generously provided by Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena and Charles and Fran Rodgers.
(Boston, MA—July 20, 2021) This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) launched a new free digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects cultural app joining over 30 cultural institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA PS1, New York Botanical Garden, Central Park Conservancy, Greenwood Art Project, London’s Serpentine Gallery, and many more. Part of the Bloomberg Connects app, available for download from Google Play or the App Store, the new ICA Digital Guide makes the ICA accessible for either onsite or offsite visits through photo, audio, and video features that offer insights into the ICA’s current exhibitions and permanent collection; activities for kids; architecture tours in English, Spanish, and French; maps; visitor info including restaurant recommendations; accessibility resources; and info about our teen programs and upcoming exhibitions.
Special current features include:
“The generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies enables the ICA to thoughtfully use technology to expand access to the arts through this new platform and connect audiences – near and far – with the art and artists we present,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.
“I love that users can hear directly from artists featured at the ICA, get more context for the artwork on view, find a restaurant for after their visit – and then explore art on view in New York, London, DC, or elsewhere,” says Kris Wilton, Director of Creative Content and Digital Engagement at the ICA. “Having one app where you can explore multiple museums and cultural centers makes a ton of sense for both visitors and institutions.”
About the ICA
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
More about Bloomberg Connects
Bloomberg Philanthropies launched the Bloomberg Connects app in November 2019. A free digital guide to cultural organizations around the world, Bloomberg Connects makes it easy to access and engage with arts and culture from mobile devices, anytime, anywhere. The app offers the ability to learn about current exhibitions at a portfolio of participating cultural partners through dynamic content exclusive to each organization. Features include expert commentary, video highlights, pinch-and-zoom capability and exhibition and way-finding maps.
About Bloomberg Philanthropies
Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in 810 cities and 170 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies encompasses all of Michael R. Bloomberg’s giving, including his foundation and personal philanthropy as well as Bloomberg Associates, a pro bono consultancy that works in cities around the world. In 2020, Bloomberg Philanthropies distributed $1.6 billion. For more information, please visit bloomberg.org or follow on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.
Media contact
Margaux Leonard, mleonard@icaboston.org, 617-478-3176
Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed installation rendering, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Rendering by Nate Garner.
Courtesy of Virgil Abloh Art Studio and Design Practice ©️ 2021
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Classic Creole, 2003. Polaroid Polacolor Pro prints, nine parts, each 24 × 20 inches each (60.7 × 50.8 cm). Acquired through the generosity of Jodi and Hal Hess. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. © María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Raúl de Nieves, The Fable, which is composed of wonders, moves the more, 2021. Fiberglass, plastic, cultured pearls, metal, glass, glue, and resin. 95 x 29 x 65 inches (241.3 x 74 x 165.1 cm). Courtesy the artist and Company Gallery, New York. © Raúl de Nieves
Marlon Forrester, StLeRoiJones23 (work in progress), 2021. Mixed media drawing and collage on paper. Courtesy the artist. © Marlon Forrester
Deana Lawson, Roxie and Raquel, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2010. Inkjet print, 35 × 43 inches (88.9 × 109.2 cm). © Deana Lawson. Courtesy the artist; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
(Boston, MA—May 27, 2021) This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) offers an exciting season of art on both sides of Boston Harbor, featuring dynamic new exhibitions by artists Virgil Abloh and Firelei Báez, and—for the first time in over a year—the return of live programming on the museum’s waterfront plaza and at the Watershed. Tickets for Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” will go on sale to ICA Members starting June 1 and to the general public on June 22. Admission to the Watershed is always free, and Water Shuttle transportation between the ICA and the Watershed is included with the price of ICA admission, first come first served. Visit icaboston.org for more information and to reserve timed tickets.
More details about the ICA’s summer season and upcoming exhibitions below. For more information and to confirm schedule, please contact Margaux Leonard at mleonard@icaboston.org or 617-478-3176.
Harborwalk Sounds
Co-produced with Berklee College of Music
Thursdays, Jul 8–Aug 26, 6–8:30 PM
FREE
An ICA summer favorite returns. Harborwalk Sounds, the museum’s free outdoor concert series, features an array of Berklee’s best student, faculty, and alumni musicians.
ICA Summer Sessions
Fridays, Jul 9–Aug 27, 5–9 PM
Tickets available at icaboston.org
Join us on the waterfront on Fridays all summer long for evenings of art and live music. Enjoy sets from great local Boston artists while you kickback with a cocktail and take in sweeping harbor views.
Watershed Family Days
Jul 14 + Aug 21, 12–4 PM
FREE
Join us in the East Boston shipyard for special family days at the ICA Watershed featuring art-making kits, music, and community.
Firelei Báez
Jul 3–Sep 6, 2021
ICA Watershed
In summer 2021, the ICA Watershed will feature a newly commissioned, monumental sculpture by acclaimed artist Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic). In her largest sculptural installation to date, the artist reimagines the archeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in Haiti as though they were revealed in East Boston after the sea receded from the Watershed floor. The Watershed’s location—in a working shipyard, trade site, and point of entry home for immigrants over decades—provides a pivotal point of reference. Báez embeds Sans-Souci within the geological layers of Boston, where histories of revolution and independence are integral to the city’s identity. This site-specific installation will invite visitors to traverse passageways and travel through time, engaging with streams of influence and interconnectedness. The work’s intricately painted architectural surfaces include symbols of healing and resistance, patterning drawn from West African indigo printing traditions (later used in the American South), and sea growths native to Caribbean waters. Báez’s sculpture points to the centuries-long exchanges of ideas and influence between Europe, the African continent, and the Americas. Organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”
Jul 3–Sep 26, 2021
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is the first museum exhibition devoted to the work of the genre-bending artist and designer Virgil Abloh (b. 1980, Rockford, IL). Abloh pioneers a practice that cuts across media and connects visual artists, musicians, graphic designers, fashion designers, and architects. Abloh cultivated an interest in design and music at an early age, finding inspiration in the urban culture of Chicago. While pursuing a master’s degree in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he worked on album covers, concert designs, and merchandising. In 2013, Abloh founded his stand-alone fashion brand Off-White™ in Milan, Italy, and, in 2018, assumed the position of artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and set in an immersive space designed by Rem Koolhaas’s renowned architecture firm OMA*AMO, the exhibition will offer an in-depth look at defining highlights of Abloh’s career, including signature clothing collections, video documentation of iconic fashion shows, distinctive furniture and graphic design work, and collaborative projects with contemporary artists. Organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
The Worlds We Make: Selections from the ICA Collection
Aug 14, 2021–Jan 2, 2022
With every call for social change arrives the possibility to make the world anew. The Worlds We Make: Selections from the ICA Collection explores how artists have visualized beyond present reality to imagine, dream, and realize the world-otherwise. Drawn from the ICA’s permanent collection and Boston-area collections, these works consider world-making in relation to broader themes such as climate and the natural environment, historical narratives and speculative fictions, the supernatural and the planetary. Expansive in subject and medium, the exhibition includes works by artists such as Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jeffrey Gibson, Lorraine O’Grady, Matthew Ritchie, and Yinka Shonibare CBE (RA), among others. Together, the works in this exhibition celebrate the emancipatory potential of artistic imagination and invite other ways to see, create, and belong in the worlds we make. Organized by Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.
Raúl de Nieves: The Treasure House of Memory
Sep 1, 2021–Jul 24, 2022
Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Michoacán, Mexico) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist, performer, and musician whose multifaceted practice ranges from stained-glass style narrative paintings, to animated performances, to densely adorned figurative sculptures encrusted with bangles, beads, bells, sequins, and other homespun materials. For the ICA, de Nieves is creating a body of interconnected works rooted in memory and exploring themes of personal transformation. The Treasure House of Memory expands the artist’s inventive adaptation of iconographic traditions inherited from the past through vibrant amalgamations of form and material rendered in an energetic and accessible visual language. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize
Sep 1, 2021–Jul 24, 2022
The 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition features Marlon Forrester (b. 1976, Georgetown, Guyana), Eben Haines (b. 1990, Boston), and Dell Marie Hamilton (b. 1971, New York). This group of artists works across a range of media with unique artistic practices that share the impulse to build platforms and create connections with others through their work. Developed against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the stand-alone projects conceived for this exhibition reflect each artist’s approach to community and exchange. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the museum’s efforts to nurture and recognize artists working in and around Boston, showcase exceptional artwork, and support the city’s thriving arts scene. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
Deana Lawson
Nov 3, 2021–Feb 27, 2022
This exhibition is the first museum survey dedicated to the work of Deana Lawson (b. 1979, Rochester, NY). Lawson is a singular voice in photography today. For more than 15 years, she has been investigating and challenging the conventional representations of Black life. Drawing on a wide spectrum of photographic languages, including the family album, studio portraiture, staged tableaux, documentary pictures, and appropriated images, Lawson’s posed photographs channel broader ideas about personal and social histories, sexuality, and spiritual beliefs. Lawson’s highly-staged large-format color photographs depict individuals, couples, and families in both domestic and public settings, picturing narratives of family, love, and desire. Engaging members of her own community as well as strangers she meets on the street, she meticulously poses her subjects in a variety of interiors to create what the artist describes as “a mirror of everyday life, but also a projection of what I want to happen. It’s about setting a different standard of values and saying that everyday Black lives, everyday experiences, are beautiful, and powerful, and intelligent.” Lawson’s works are made in collaboration with her subjects, who are often nude, embracing, and directly confronting the camera, destabilizing the notion of photography as a passively voyeuristic medium. This survey exhibition will include a selection of photographs from 2004 to the present and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, featuring the perspectives of a variety of scholars, historians, and writers. This exhibition is co-organized by ICA/Boston and MoMA PS1. Organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, ICA/Boston, and Peter Eleey, former Chief Curator, MoMA PS1, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, ICA/Boston.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On July 4, 2018, the ICA opened to the public its new ICA Watershed expanding artistic and educational programming on both sides of Boston Harbor—the Seaport and East Boston. Located in the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina, the ICA Watershed transformed a 15,000-square-foot, formerly condemned space into a vast and welcoming space to see and experience large-scale art. The Watershed builds upon the extraordinary momentum achieved by the museum since opening its visionary waterfront building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in 2006. Admission to the Watershed—central to the museum’s vision for art and civic life—is free for all. The Watershed opened its inaugural year with an immersive installation by Diana Thater and its second year, 2019, with the U.S. premiere of John Akomfrah’s Purple. The Watershed was closed to the public in 2020 to support the city and state in their efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19. During the pandemic, the site has been used as a food distribution site to address a direct need within the East Boston community, which has experienced one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Boston.
Firelei Báez
Free admission to the ICA Watershed is made possible by the generosity of Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation.
The Boston Foundation welcomes you to the ICA Watershed.
The ICA Watershed is supported by Fund for the Arts, a public art program of the New England Foundation for the Arts and Vertex.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition tour is made possible by Kenneth C. Griffin.
The exhibition is curated by Michael Darling, former James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at MCA Chicago, and is designed by Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of OMA. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
Major support for the Boston presentation of Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is provided by Encore Boston Harbor and Boston Seaport by WS Development.
Support is provided by Northern Trust
Neiman Marcus is the Lead Education Partner of Teen Programs associated with Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”
Additional support is generously provided by Kathleen McDonough and Edward Berman, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Stephanie and John Connaughton, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Audrey and James Foster, Jodi and Hal Hess, Marina Kalb and David Feinberg, Kristen and Kent Lucken, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.
Raúl de Nieves: The Treasure House of Memory
Support is generously provided by Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena and Charles and Fran Rodgers.
2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize
The exhibition and prize are generously endowed by James and Audrey Foster.
Deana Lawson
Major support for Deana Lawson is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Aedie McEvoy, Kambiz and Nazgol Shahbazi, Kim Sinatra, Charlotte and Herbert Wagner III, and the Kristen and Kent Lucken Fund for Photography.
Photo by OJ Slaughter
(Boston, MA—April 13, 2021) In advance of the highly anticipated summer exhibition Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will release an exclusive Virgil Abloh sweatshirt on April 27, offering a first look at a new line of designs created by Abloh only for the ICA. Abloh’s hooded sweatshirt in custom green features graphic prints overlaid with the artwork Efflorescence (2019), which is included in the exhibition. The sweatshirt will be released for sale to ICA members only on the ICA Store website and will be available April 27–29 as supplies last. The April presale will be accessible to ICA members at the Friend level and above on April 27, Associate level and above on April 28, and all members on April 29. Please note that supplies are limited. For more details about the presale and ICA membership, please visit icaboston.org.
Virgil Abloh’s full line of designs for the ICA will be available online and at the artist’s pop-up store “Church & State” beginning July 3, to celebrate the public opening of the exhibition. ICA Members will receive early access starting June 30. All purchases support the ICA’s artistic and educational programs.
“Church & State” will feature a variety of products designed by Abloh, including a line of exhibition-specific apparel, as well as limited-edition pieces from Abloh’s Off-White™ brand produced exclusively for the ICA. Abloh and Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of renowned architecture firm OMA, have completely reimagined the concept and design of the store for the ICA, transforming the museum’s Bank of America Art Lab on the first floor. “Church & State” is an extension of Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” and is included with general museum admission.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is the first museum exhibition devoted to the work of the multidisciplinary artist and designer Virgil Abloh (b. 1980, Rockford, IL). Abloh pioneers a practice that cuts across media and connects visual artists, musicians, graphic designers, fashion designers, and architects. Abloh cultivated an interest in design and music at an early age, finding inspiration in the urban culture of Chicago. While pursuing a master’s degree in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he worked on album covers, concert designs, and merchandising. In 2013, Abloh founded his stand-alone fashion brand Off-White™ in Milan, Italy, and, in 2018, assumed the position of artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and set in an immersive space designed by Rem Koolhaas’s renowned architecture firm OMA*AMO, the exhibition will offer an in-depth look at defining highlights of Abloh’s career, including signature clothing collections, video documentation of iconic fashion shows, distinctive furniture and graphic design work, and collaborative projects with contemporary artists. A program of cross-disciplinary offerings will mirror the artist’s range of interests across music and design.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition tour is made possible by Kenneth C. Griffin.
The exhibition is curated by Michael Darling, former James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at MCA Chicago, and is designed by Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of OMA. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
Major support for the Boston presentation of Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is provided by Encore Boston Harbor and Boston Seaport by WS Development.
Support is provided by Northern Trust.
Neiman Marcus is the Lead Education Partner of Teen Programs associated with Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech.”
Additional support is generously provided by Kathleen McDonough and Edward Berman, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Stephanie and John Connaughton, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Audrey and James Foster, Jodi and Hal Hess,Marina Kalb and David Feinberg, Kristen and Kent Lucken, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.
Courtesy of Virgil Abloh Art Studio and Design Practice ©️ 2021
(Boston, MA—April 6, 2021) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” the first museum exhibition devoted to the work of the multidisciplinary artist and designer Virgil Abloh (b. 1980, Rockford, IL), opening to the public on July 3 (Member Preview Days begin July 1; more details at icaboston.org). The Founder and Creative Director of Off-White™ and current Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear, Abloh is known for his work in music, visual art, philanthropy, and the fields of design. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and set in an immersive space designed by Rem Koolhaas’s renowned architecture firm OMA*AMO, the exhibition will offer an in-depth look at defining highlights of Abloh’s career, including signature clothing collections from his stand-alone fashion brand Off-White™, video documentation of iconic fashion shows, distinctive furniture, graphic design work, and collaborative projects with other artists. The exhibition comprises nearly 70 works, including two new works that will be on view for the first time in the Boston presentation. On view July 3 through September 26, 2021, Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is organized by Michael Darling, former James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at MCA Chicago. The exhibition is designed by Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of OMA. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
“We are all so excited to welcome Virgil Abloh and his explosive creativity to Boston. Audiences and Abloh fans will be immersed in his art and fashion and the multiplicity of references to history, architecture, street and skatewear that Virgil deftly uses to redefine and shape 21st-century culture and design,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.
“Abloh’s creativity is unstoppable and wildly innovative. He made his mark by celebrating the spirit of streetwear culture while also appropriating and altering high culture to create something exciting and new. This foundational work spurred creative pursuits in every artistic medium and with countless collaborators. ‘Figures of Speech’ guides visitors through signature moments in the past twenty years of Abloh’s creative life, presenting a range of projects and collaborations that reflect his ability to channel far-reaching influences—from Caravaggio and Mies van der Rohe to skateboarding and 1980s graffiti—into his own unique approach,” said Ruth Erickson, the ICA’s Mannion Family Curator.
The exhibition offers an unprecedented survey of Abloh’s creative work over nearly two decades and pulls back the curtain on his process. Prototypes are presented alongside finished artworks, product designs, and fashion to reveal his myriad inspirations—from centuries-old paintings to commonplace signage at construction sites. Running throughout the exhibition is an emphasis on dialogue, which Abloh creates through his inventive use of language and quotation marks, turning the objects he designs and the people who wear his clothing into “figures of speech.”
The ICA will premiere four new works in its presentation of “Figures of Speech” including a large-scale sculpture “Frontin’” (2021) that takes the shape of a half-pipe skate ramp to consider this formative built and social space on Abloh, and “Toolbox” (2019), an inventive mash-up of a Louis Vuitton trunk with a c. 1980s boom box, complete with colorful graffiti and rabbit ear antennas. The museum will also include Abloh’s celebrated Louis Vuitton fall 2021 menswear line, presented as a video work made through the collaboration with numerous artists including Saul Williams, Kai Isiah Jamal, and Wu Tsang. Filled with spoken word, performance, music, and movement, this tremendous collection reflects Abloh at the height of his interdisciplinary creativity. His work in fashion will be presented in a newly conceived environment within the exhibition, designed by Abloh and Samir Bantal of AMO.
Abloh’s expansive creative vision will extend beyond the ICA through a new series of artworks created for the exhibition advertising campaign (see image above). “The announcement of my exhibition at the ICA/Boston offers a unique view inside the operating system of my art practice. Figurative and literal sentiments are explored at the same time, as evident by the exhibition artwork itself,” said Abloh.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” features five galleries that chronicle the different pillars of the artist’s work in fashion, music, art, furniture, and graphic design. Setting the tone for visitors as they enter the exhibition, the museum’s elevator shaft will feature “PSA” (2019), an 18-foot-long flag that reads, “QUESTION EVERYTHING”.
Early work
Abloh got his start in fashion with a t-shirt. In the early 2000s, his fledgling designs caught the attention of Kanye West’s creative team, and West was so impressed that he invited Abloh to join his inner circle. Over the next decade, Abloh witnessed experiments in fashion and concert merchandise design. He also completed an internship at the Italian fashion house Fendi and, in 2012, was ready to go out on his own. Abloh returned to graphic t-shirts, designing clothing with streetwear brand Hood by Air and later his own brand Pyrex Vision, which featured mass-produced sweatshirts and plaid shirts onto which he screenprinted “Pyrex,” (the glassware used in home drug labs) “23,” (Michael Jordan’s basketball number) and images of a painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio. These references allude to stereotypical ways disadvantaged youth can overcome their hardships: by selling drugs or becoming a famous athlete. The video “A Team with No Sport” (2012) helped to promote the launch of Pyrex Vision and included members of the then-emerging rap collective A$AP Mob. Abloh’s early work was inspired by sports uniforms and hip-hop and skateboarder fashion, as well as provocative images and graphics found in contemporary art. It shows the first signs of his subversive interest in taking something basic—even boring—and injecting it with new meaning, and then sending it out into the world to be seen again in a fresh way.
Fashion
Abloh’s first fashion brand, Pyrex Vision, was based on a limited template of screen-printed store-bought shirts, shorts, and sweatshirts. A year later, in 2013, Abloh signaled the expanded scope of his ambition, launching the clothing brand Off-White™, establishing a studio in Milan—the fashion capital of the world—and showing his work at the prestigious design showcase Paris Fashion Week. Nearly every Off-White™ collection investigates a theme, tackling class, race, history, gender, and other established rules of fashion and society. His architecture background and interest in the urban fabric also come into play in patterns and graphics derived from roads, signage, buildings, uniforms, and many other commonplace items. This gallery presents a dynamic display of Abloh’s work in fashion, leading visitors from some of his earliest forays in fashion to highlights from Off-White™ and Louis Vuitton seasons. Bracketing this display is video documentation of select fashion shows, elements from his innovative scenography, and such signature objects as “FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY,” (2018) Abloh’s re-imagination of Louis Vuitton’s classic Keepall bag, and Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh™ for Beyoncé (2018), an Off-White™ dress Abloh designed for Beyoncé’s 2018 Vogue cover photo shoot (though it was not published in the magazine) that combines a traditional flowing silhouette with Abloh’s signature black-and-white diagonal stripes.
Music
This section captures Abloh’s collaborations with stars such as Kanye West, Jay-Z, and A$AP Rocky, among others, and his prodigious work as a DJ and in the music industry. As with his work in fashion, Abloh connects with subcultures and offers alternatives to the status quo in his work with music, performing wide-ranging DJ sets at venues and festivals around the world. Parallel to his work on Off-White™, he has constructed a comprehensive visual approach to branding his work, drawing not only on his skill in graphic design, but also on his experience working for West’s creative company. There, he oversaw the creation of concert merchandise, album packaging, and stage designs for West as well as other musicians in his orbit. The work “IN HIS IMAGE” (A TRIBUTE TO YEEZUS) (2019) is a large-scale version of Kanye West’s sixth album, Yeezus (2013), which features album art designed by Abloh. The new version pays homage to the Grammy-nominated album and the graphic clarity of its design. The packaging reveals Abloh’s modernist architectural sensibility: only the necessary elements are retained, reducing the packaging to a single red sticker that keeps the CD’s jewel box closed and displays the album’s name. Other works bring elements of Abloh’s performances into the gallery, including the 14-minute sound piece First Person (2019) that features spoken word sound-tracks Abloh often curates to play before his Off-White™ runway shows, and the text-based video In Other Words (2017) often projected behind Abloh during his concerts.
Black gaze
This section presents Abloh’s fashion and artworks that reflect on Black cultural experiences in the United States. With the 2013 launch of Off-White™ in Milan, Abloh challenged the elite fashion industry’s long-standing exclusion of Black talent. Abloh marketed Off-White™ prominently on social media, appealing to a younger, more diverse generation of consumers. Off-White™ campaigns have celebrated Black artists, athletes, and musicians, providing a platform and affirming their identity as creators in their own right. In 2018, Abloh assumed the role of Men’s Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton, becoming one of the few Black designers to helm a major Parisian fashion house. He now uses his high-profile platform to forge a more inclusive vision for high fashion. Highlights include selected photographs from striking advertising campaigns as well as recent sculptures by Abloh. “AS IMPOSSIBLE” (2019), a ladder sculpted from blue foam and too fragile to ascend, serves a symbol of Abloh’s improbable rise and the serious challenges faced by people of color in most industries. Another work, a neon sign titled “You’re Obviously in the Wrong Place” (2015/19), originally welcomed attendees to the Off-White™ Fall/Winter 2016 runway show, referencing a line from the film Pretty Woman (1990) where a woman is dismissed by a snobbish saleswoman at a high-end clothing store.
Design
For Abloh, design is as much about the process as it is about the final product, which he achieves by asking questions and prototyping. Picking apart established norms in art and design including materials and imagery, he upends expectations to call critical attention to our surroundings. The transparency inherent to his method nods to his training in both architecture and engineering, and his admiration for modernist German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose buildings make their structures and functions readily apparent. This section surveys Abloh’s expansive design practice, including forays into architecture, furniture, painting, sculpture, and shoes. A series of Abloh’s concrete benches and chairs titled Efflorescence (2019) anchor the gallery along with the towering sculpture Dorm Room (2019) built from prototype furniture with rugs Abloh created in a 2018–2019 collaboration with global housewares retailer IKEA. “AN ARRAY OF AIR” (2019) features unreleased shoes from Abloh’s collaborations with Nike in various stages of prototyping. Abloh’s designs for Nike used collaged elements, transparent materials, self-referential labels, tabs, and zip ties to emphasize the shoes’ construction, inviting people to take a second look at these iconic sneakers. These prototypes offer a behind-the-scenes view of Abloh’s design process, which involves working through many concepts and iterations of a project before reaching the final result.
Hear from Virgil Abloh, go behind the scenes, and explore his exclusive line of products for the ICA, on our free digital guide on Bloomberg Connects. Available free by searching “Bloomberg Connects” on the App Store or Google Play.
A special Virgil Abloh pop-up store called “Church & State” accompanies the exhibition. It will feature a variety of products designed by Abloh, including a line of exhibition-specific apparel, as well as limited-edition pieces from Abloh’s Off-White™ brand produced exclusively for the ICA. Abloh and Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of renowned architecture firm OMA, have completely reimagined the concept and design of the store for the ICA, transforming the museum’s Bank of America Art Lab on the first floor.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 512-page monograph. Produced in close collaboration with the artist, the catalogue uses Abloh’s signature “question everything” approach to explore his creativity in a three-books-in-one format. The museum section offers an overview of Abloh’s multidisciplinary work by exhibition curator Michael Darling, and features essays and interviews with key voices in art, fashion, design, and architecture, including Taiye Selasi, Lou Stoppard, Michael Rock, Samir Bantal, Rem Koolhaas, and Anja Aronowsky Cronberg. In the archives section, more than 1700 images culled from the artist’s personal files reveal the remarkable breadth of his influences and interests. Statements from peers in the creative community, including George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Michele Lamy, Heron Preston, and Anna Wintour, attest to Abloh’s rich collaborations and wide-ranging network. An illustrated index section cross references plate and archive images according to categories established by Abloh for his unique practice. Designed by OK-RM and Playlab, the volume is published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and DelMonico Books-Prestel. The exhibition catalogue is available for purchase at the ICA Store.
Jul 3 to Sep 26, 2021
The ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Mediatheque will feature a presentation co-developed with Boston-based artist OJ Slaughter. As part of a larger photography project for Virgil Abloh’s pop-up store “Church & State,” Slaughter collaborated with ICA teens on an editorial fashion shoot inspired by Abloh’s work and his theme of “breaking the rules.”
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition tour is made possible by Kenneth C. Griffin.
The exhibition is curated by Michael Darling, former the James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at MCA Chicago, and is designed by Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the research and design studio of OMA. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
Major support for the Boston presentation of Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is provided by Encore Boston Harbor and Boston Seaport by WS Development.
Support is provided by Northern Trust
Neiman Marcus is the Lead Education Partner of Teen Programs associated with Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”
Additional support is generously provided by Kathleen McDonough and Edward Berman, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Stephanie and John Connaughton, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Audrey and James Foster, Jodi and Hal Hess, Marina Kalb and David Feinberg, Kristen and Kent Lucken, David and Leslie Puth, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.
Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36’16.9″N 72°13’07.0″W, 42° 21’48.762″ N 71°1’59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez
Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36’16.9″N 72°13’07.0″W, 42° 21’48.762″ N 71°1’59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez
(Boston, MA—April 5, 2021) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open the next season of the Watershed, its project space in East Boston, with a new, monumental sculpture by acclaimed New York-based artist Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic). In her largest sculptural installation to date, the artist reimagines ancient ruins as though the sea had receded from the Watershed floor to reveal the archeology of human history in the Caribbean. Accompanied by an undulating blue expanse overhead—evoking both water and the night sky—this immersive sculptural installation includes a soundscape created from recordings of Boston Harbor and the Caribbean, featuring sounds of the sea and maritime bustling, as well as personal stories of migration. In addition, a large-scale mural created by the artist for the Watershed—featuring a seascape populated by Ciguapa, a mythological creature from Dominican folklore—creates a multi-textured viewer experience. These elements weave together various histories and stories, setting the stage for visitors to be transported into new realms. Opening to the public on July 3 (Member Preview Days begin July 1; more details at icaboston.org), Báez’s sculpture and mural will be accompanied by an art project by Boston-based artist Stephen Hamilton in the Watershed’s Harbor Room. On view July 3 to September 6, 2021, Firelei Báez is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
“The Watershed’s location—in a working shipyard and as a trade site and point of entry and home for immigrants over decades—provides a pivotal point of reference for the work. Her installation will invite visitors to walk through passageways, travel through time, and experience the many streams of influence and interconnectedness that the artist conjures,” said Medvedow.
“Báez’s visual references draw from a wide variety of sources in the past, and are reconfigured to explore new possibilities in the present. Her site-specific installation at the Watershed combines her interests in various diasporic narratives—African, European, Caribbean—to cast cultural and regional histories into an imaginative realm,” said Respini.
Báez’s architectural sculpture is adapted from the Sans-Souci Palace in Milot, Haiti, built between 1810 and 1813 for the revolutionary leader and first King of Haiti, Henri Christophe I. The Haitian Revolution, led by self-liberated enslaved people against the French colonial government, was an early precursor to the abolition movements of the United States. Once a space of splendor, since an 1842 earthquake, the castle has been an archeological ruin. At the Watershed, Báez reimagines these ruins emerging from Boston Harbor’s sea floor. She embeds Sans-Souci within the geological layers of Boston, where histories of revolution and independence are integral, including often overlooked related narratives from non-European locations.
Báez’s intricately painted architectural surfaces include symbols of healing and resistance as well as sea growths native to Caribbean waters. Originally trained as a painter, Báez is an expert of trompe l’oeil. She considers all of her work, even the sculpture at the Watershed, to belong to the illusionistic realm of painting. The work could be considered a hybrid, where the illusion of a painting and physicality of a sculpture meet. The patterning of the sculpture’s surface is drawn largely from West African indigo printing appropriated from enslaved peoples in the 17th-century American South. American indigo was a driving force in the early national economy, and one of the primary trade goods shipped from colonial-era Boston. This material became intrinsically woven into early American decorative and utilitarian textiles—a symbol of “true blue” Americana. Báez’s sculpture points to the centuries-long exchange of ideas and influence between Europe, the African continent, and the Americas.
ICA Digital Guide on Bloomberg Connects
See artist Firelei Báez at work on this monumental installation on the new ICA Digital Guide on Bloomberg Connects. Available free by searching “Bloomberg Connects” on the App Store or Google Play.
Stephen Hamilton
Jul 3 to Sep 6, 2021
The Watershed’s Harbor Room will feature a presentation co-developed with Boston-based artist and educator Stephen Hamilton that highlights the generations-long tradition of indigo dyeing in West Africa too often ignored in the accounting of early American history. Considering Baez’s sculptural work that includes references to erased histories of the African diaspora from the West, Hamilton will bring these histories to life once again through words, images, and textiles. On display will be his painting Owners of the Earth (2020), a richly layered mixed-media work that refers to traditional artforms and philosophies from the Yoruba people in West Africa, accompanied by a description of the unrecognized historical contributions of West Africa to indigo use in the Americas, and educational materials depicting indigo dying techniques that the artist adopted during his research in southwestern Nigeria.
“A flexible space for gathering and education projects, the Harbor Room highlights artists from our community and features projects in response to our location and focused themes at the Watershed. Hamilton’s research, writing, and art seek to reclaim artistic knowledge lost during the transatlantic slave trade. For his paintings, he deploys a distinctive mixture of both Black American and traditional West African traditions, resulting in a unique and striking combination that feels both historical and contemporary at the same time,” said Monica Garza, the ICA’s Charlotte Wagner Director of Education.
Firelei Báez
Firelei Báez was born in 1981 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent. Her upbringing between Hispaniola’s two countries, which have a longstanding history of tension predicated on ethnic difference, informs her concerns with the politics of place and heritage. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Báez received a BFA from the Cooper Union’s School of Art before receiving her MFA from Hunter College in New York. She is shortlisted for Artes Mundi 9 in 2021. In 2019, the artist’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was featured in the 2018 Berlin Biennale, Prospect.3: Notes for Now (2014), Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial (2013), and El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files (2011). Her major 2015 solo exhibition Bloodlines was organized by the Pérez Art Museum Miami and travelled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Báez is the recipient of many awards, including most recently the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2020), the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), the Soros Arts Fellowship (2019), the United States Artists Fellowship (2019), the College Art Association Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work (2018), the Future Generation Art Prize (2017), the Chiaro Award (2016), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2011). The artist’s work is represented in important collections worldwide, including ICA/Boston, the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Durham) Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta), New Orleans Museum of Art, and Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis).
Stephen Hamilton
Boston-based artist and educator Stephen Hamilton incorporates both Western and non-Western artmaking techniques to create portraits of his contemporaries. As a Black American trained in traditional West African artforms, he recognizes his weaving, dyeing, and woodcarving as ritualized acts. These processes reclaim ancestral knowledge dissociated from Africans in the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Hamilton’s labor-intensive process to portray his living subjects with beauty, honor, and dignity also counters negative representations of Black Americans.
Hamilton completed his studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and will soon pursue graduate work at Harvard University’s African and African American Studies Department. He also studied at the Nike Centre for Art and Culture at Osogbo, Nigeria in 2015–16 through an international artist residency award from Arts Connect International. Since 2018, he has served as an assistant professor of illustration at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a senior instructor at the school’s Artward Bound program, a college-access initiative for high school students. Hamilton’s work has been exhibited in venues including Boston City Hall, The Museum of The National Center of Afro-American Artists, the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Nubian Square, and Medicine Wheel Productions. His work can be found in the collections of the ICA/Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
On July 4, 2018, the ICA opened to the public its new ICA Watershed expanding artistic and educational programming on both sides of Boston Harbor—the Seaport and East Boston. Located in the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina, the ICA Watershed transformed a 15,000-square-foot, formerly condemned space into a vast and welcoming space to see and experience large-scale art. The Watershed builds upon the extraordinary momentum achieved by the museum since opening its visionary waterfront building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in 2006. Admission to the Watershed—central to the museum’s vision for art and civic life—is free for all. The Watershed opened its inaugural year with an immersive installation by Diana Thater and its second year, 2019, with the U.S. premiere of John Akomfrah’s Purple. The Watershed was closed to the public in 2020 to support the city and state in their efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19. During the pandemic, the site has been used as a food distribution site to address a direct need within the East Boston community, which has experienced one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Boston.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Firelei Báez is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
Free admission to the ICA Watershed is made possible by the generosity of Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation.
The Boston Foundation welcomes you to the ICA Watershed.
The ICA Watershed is supported by Fund for the Arts, a public art program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, and Vertex.
Eva LeWitt, Untitled (Mesh Circles), 2021. Installation view, Eva LeWitt, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2021. Courtesy the artist and VI,VII, Oslo, Norway. Photo by Ernesto Galan. © Eva LeWitt
Eva LeWitt, Untitled (Mesh Circles), 2021. Installation view, Eva LeWitt, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2021. Courtesy the artist and VI,VII, Oslo, Norway. Photo by Ernesto Galan. © Eva LeWitt
Eva LeWitt, Untitled (Mesh Circles), 2021. Installation view, Eva LeWitt, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2021. Courtesy the artist and VI,VII, Oslo, Norway. Photo by Ernesto Galan. © Eva LeWitt
(Boston, MA—March 5, 2021) New York-based artist Eva LeWitt (b. 1985, Spoleto, Italy) transforms the first floor of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) with the installation of a new, monumental hanging wall sculpture for the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. Untitled (Mesh Circles) (2021) is made of bands of colorful coated mesh fabric whose shifting linear composition creates a number of interlocking circular forms. As Untitled’s crosshatched surface pattern and fields of color overlap and respond to ambient conditions of light, air, and movement, a shimmering moiré effect is produced, creating an uplifting experience that vibrates throughout the museum’s interior. LeWitt’s art wall installation will go on view on March 20, when the ICA reopens to the public (Member Appreciation Days begin March 18 and 19). Timed tickets will be available for members starting March 9 and for the general public on March 12 at icaboston.org. On view through October 23, 2022, Eva LeWitt is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
“Eva LeWitt exhibits a uniquely personal mode of scale, color, and materials in her work, both intimate and grand, and we are delighted to share her vibrant wall sculpture, which will greet all our visitors when they arrive at the ICA,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.
“LeWitt has a distinctive ability to make exuberant artworks out of everyday materials, often large wall-based sculptures of hanging geometric forms and waves of color. For Untitled (Mesh Circles), she combines lengths of fabric to great effect: an artwork that playfully responds to the museum’s unique architecture to truly enliven the space,” said De Blois.
The ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is dedicated to site-specific works by leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually. Located along the eastern interior wall of the museum’s glass-enclosed lobby, the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is the visitor’s first encounter with art upon entering the building.
Eva LeWitt (b, 1985, Spoleto, Italy) lives and works in New York, NY. She is a graduate of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Recent exhibitions include The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; The Jewish Museum, New York; and JOAN, Los Angeles.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
Eva LeWitt is presented by Max Mara.
Additional support is provided by Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest and Barbara H. Lloyd.
Marlon Forrester
Eben Haines
Dell Marie Hamilton. Photo by Terrence Jennings
(Boston, MA—February 26, 2021) Marlon Forrester, Eben Haines, and Dell Marie Hamilton have been named the recipients of the 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, the museum announced today. This group of artists works in a diversity of media, including collage, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and installation, with unique artistic practices that share the impulse to create connections with other artists through their work. Developed against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the individual projects reflect each artist’s approach to community and exchange. The 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, the ICA’s Assistant Curator and Publications Manager, and will open to the public on August 25, 2021.
“We are grateful to Jim and Audrey Foster for their support which allows the museum the time and resources for the research and presentation of this important biennial exhibition,” said Jill Medvedow, the Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “The works of Marlon Forrester, Eben Haines, and Dell Marie Hamilton help illuminate the way forward from the isolation and trauma of these troubled times.”
“The 2021 Foster Prize artists illustrate the creativity, vitality, and expertise of Boston’s artistic community, and we are very pleased to congratulate them,” the Fosters added.
To select the 2021 artists for the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, De Blois undertook extensive research, through sustained and ongoing conversations with artists and colleagues about their perspectives on the cultural fabric of the city and the different institutions and histories that continue to inform artists working locally. The presentations in the 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition will explore themes of collectivity, identity, memory, and history, as well as intergenerational artistic legacies in Boston.
James and Audrey Foster endowed the prize and the exhibition to nurture and recognize exceptional Boston-area artists. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its new facility in 2006.
An artist and educator born in Guyana, South America and raised in Boston, Marlon Forrester (b. 1976, Georgetown, Guyana) makes artworks that take the representations and uses of the Black male body as a central concern. Forrester often employs themes and motifs drawn from basketball culture in paintings, drawings, collages, and multimedia works that explore ideas of transformation and ritual and questions around the mediation of the Black male figure in America. Following an influential return visit to Guyana, Forrester’s work increasingly examines the instability of identity and complex ideas of homeland for individuals of the Caribbean diaspora. Forrester holds a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and a MFA from Yale University. He is a resident artist at the African-American Master Artist Residence Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern University. His work has been exhibited at such venues as University Hall Gallery, UMass Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, Boston; The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University; 808 Gallery, Boston University; Ajira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ; Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly, MA; and The Museum of the National Center for Afro American Artists, Roxbury.
Born and raised in Boston, Eben Haines (b. 1990, Boston) investigates the life of objects through works that emphasize the constructed nature of history. Haines’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations employ various techniques and materials to suggest the passage of time and volatility. Many works explore the conventions of portraiture, through figures and objects pictured against cinematic backdrops or in otherworldly scenes. Recent works consider themes such as housing insecurity and accessibility during the pandemic, especially Shelter In Place Gallery, a scale model gallery that has presented more than fifty exhibitions since March of 2020. Haines holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been shown at such venues as 13forest Gallery, Arlington, MA; AREA Gallery, Boston; Aviary Gallery, Jamaica Plain; Boston Center for the Arts; and GRIN, Providence. In 2018, Haines received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Drawing. Shelter In Place Gallery received a Transformative Public Art grant from the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture and the original model was recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Dell Marie Hamilton (b. 1971, New York) works across a variety of mediums including performance, video, painting, and photography, using the body—often her own—to investigate themes of memory, gender, history, and citizenship. With roots in Belize, Honduras, and the Caribbean, Hamilton frequently draws upon the personal experiences of her family as well as the folkloric traditions and histories of that region in her work. Hamilton holds a BA in Journalism from Northeastern University and a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She has frequently presented her work at venues around New England, including Stone Gallery, Boston University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; and Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, where she became the first visual artist to present a performance artwork in their galleries. Her most recent curatorial project, Nine Moments for Now, which was presented at The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard, was ranked by Hyperallergic.com as one of 2018’s top 20 exhibitions in the U.S. In 2019, she presented work in the 13th Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba. Along with her collaborator, Magda Fernandez, Hamilton is part of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum’s 2021 inaugural cohort of recipients of the Charla Fund, a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative that provides grants to Latinx artists. A frequent performer in the work of María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Hamilton appears in Campos-Pons’s collaborative performance, When We Gather, which includes poetry and choreography from artists LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Okwui Okpokwasili.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The exhibition and prize are generously endowed by James and Audrey Foster.
Henry Taylor, i’m yours, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 73 1/8 × 74 1/4 inches (185.7 × 188.6 cm). Acquired through the generosity of the Acquisitions Circle. © Henry Taylor
Simone Leigh, Cupboard IX, 2019. Stoneware, raffia, and steel armature, 78 × 60 × 80 inches (198.1 × 152.4 × 203.2 cm). Acquired through the generosity of Bridgitt and Bruce Evans and Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Courtesy the artist. © Simone Leigh
Nan Goldin, Chrissy with her 100-year-old Grandmother, Provincetown, 1977. Gelatin silver print, 8 1/2 × 11 inches (21.6 × 27.9 cm). Gift of Lillian and Hyman Goldin. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery. © Nan Goldin
Cornelia Parker, Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson), 1999. Installation view, Permanent Collection 1, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2006–07. Photo by Charles Mayer Photography. © Cornelia Parker
Major exhibition includes works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kader Attia, Firelei Báez, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Simone Leigh, Doris Salcedo, and many others
(Boston, MA—November 2, 2020) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times, a major collection presentation that features new acquisitions and iconic artworks from the ICA’s collection including works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kader Attia, Firelei Báez, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Simone Leigh, Doris Salcedo, and many others. The exhibition opens to members on Thursday, November 19 at 10 AM and at ICA Free Thursday Night on November 19 for the public. Advance timed tickets required at icaboston.org/tickets. On view through May 23, 2021, i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times is collaboratively organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager; Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator; Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant; and Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
“After the events of this year, we recognize now more than ever the power of the arts to uplift us as we reckon with all the uncertainties and complexity of our world,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.
“i’m yours features new works to the ICA’s collection that have never been on view here, including a life-size sculpture by Simone Leigh, an installation of over 225 drawings by Firelei Báez, and portraits by photographer Zanele Muholi. Visitors will also be able to see iconic favorites from the collection like Tara Donovan’s cube of straight pins and Cornelia Parker’s hanging sculpture of charred pieces of wood,” shared the curators.
For this exhibition, the curators have taken an experimental approach, creating a series of discrete scenes within a dramatic architectural space featuring theatrical lighting and bold color. These scenes address topics that are relevant during these times of isolation, including ideas of home and history, social and material transformation, and frames of identity.
The exhibition opens with three singular artworks: Simone Leigh’s stunning life-sized sculpture Cupboard IX; Louise Bourgeois’s theatrical Cell (Hands and Mirror) where, finely carved marble arms are reflected through mirrors installed in an evocative structure; and Green Heart by feminist painter Joan Semmel, whose work has engaged with charged eroticism and frank, corporeal self-portraiture. The works gathered feature the human figure either in its totality or in part, and evoke touch in poetic ways—whether in Leigh’s outstretched arms, the conjoined hands in Bourgeois’s sculpture, or the full-bodied embrace in Semmel’s painting.
Bridging myth and media, the works in the second scene share narratives of land, history, and the body. Firelei Báez’s monumental Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River) includes 225 hand-drawn illustrations over repurposed historical texts written about Hispaniola, the Caribbean island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Wangechi Mutu’s precarious Blackthrone VIII fuses ordinary materials together in a towering sculpture. Nalini Malani’s video sketch Penelope animates a classical myth. Caitlin Keogh’s painting Blank Melody, Old Wall gathers disembodied feminine motifs floating against a vibrantly designed background. Together, these four works offer artistic musings on the creative balance found in open-ended renewal.
Some of the ICA’s beloved artworks are presented as a means to meditate on the aftermath of loss and the possibility for creative production from what remains. Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson) strings the charred wooden pieces of a destroyed building to form a suspended sculpture. Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios features the shoes of women who had “disappeared” (presumed abducted and killed) during the Colombian conflict (1967–present). Marlene Dumas’s large-scale paintings in The Messengers bring together three renderings of skeletons with a portrait of her own daughter. Nan Goldin’s photograph, Chrissy with her 100-year-old Grandmother, Provincetown, captures a momentary connection between two women at different points in their lives. Together, these works attest to the forces of loss, death, and destruction, as well as those of tenderness and care, that form our human condition.
Notions of home are central to the works in next grouping, including rethinking familiar domestic objects. Family ties and relationships play a large part in artists’ reflections on home. Boston-area artist Rania Matar’s Orly and Ruth, a photograph of two Boston-area sisters taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, offers a glimpse into lives in isolation. Toyin Odutola’s Heir Apparent imagines the lives of two fictional Nigerian families joined by marriage, while Nan Goldin captures intimate moments with the families we choose to make. The relationship of home to gender identity also undergirds many of the works gathered here, such as Cindy Sherman’s staged Untitled Film Still #3, a send-up of conventional gender roles.
The next grouping features three artworks that reveal dense layers of meaning ingrained in familiar, everyday materials. Tara Donovan’s Untitled (Pins) is a cube made from thousands of metal dressmaker’s pins that recalls the “unitary forms” of so many highly finished minimalist sculptures. A structure of stacked white sugar cubes on a silver platter dissolves under poured motor oil in Kader Attia’s video Oil and Sugar #2. Sugar and oil are laden with complicated relationships to history, politics, and the environment, even as both are seemingly ubiquitous in everyday life. Equally as complex in its range of associations, the American flag at the center of Cady Noland’s sculptural assemblage Objectification Process is still sealed in plastic packaging. The inert flag positioned on an orthopedic walker suggests a powerful critique of American symbols of national unity and pageantry.
The next scene features nearly thirty portraits of front-facing subjects, many of whom lock eyes with the viewer. Challenging familiar forms of museum display and the genre of portraiture, this grouping stages an encounter in which the viewer is both seeing and being seen—and questions the power dynamics assumed in such relations. Some works, like Zanele Muholi’s suite of photographs and Collier Schorr’s candid portrait, expand ideas of visual agency and self-representation. Others interrogate conventions such as identification photography: Thomas Ruff’s dramatic shift in scale and Rineke Dijkstra’s double portrait both trouble the notion that portraits reveal vital aspects about identity. Brought into dialogue with one another, these portraits explore both furtive possibilities and persistent questions related to the power of seeing and being seen.
Offering a glimpse into the long history of performance art and social critique, the final scene brings together two artists who took to public space to stage unsanctioned and layered portrayals of class, race, and gender. Between 1980 and 1983, Lorraine O’Grady performed as a fictional 1950s beauty queen named Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, or Miss Black Middle-Class. Arriving uninvited to gallery and museum openings throughout New York, O’Grady’s glamorous and unforgettable alter ego disrupted these private events to expose the racism and sexism rampant in the art field. Similar in its critique of class and privilege, Nari Ward’s 1996 performance involved the artist, dressed in a crisp suit, pushing his sculpture Savior down 125th Street in Harlem, New York. Recalling a traveling salesman, religious figure, and itinerant person, Ward’s performance puts forward his towering sculpture—carefully constructed from discarded objects—as a kind of talisman against a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983 in Enugu, Nigeria)
Kader Attia (b. 1970 in Dugny, France)
Firelei Báez (b. 1981 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic)
Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911 in Paris; d. 2010 in New York)
Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959 in Sittard, the Netherlands)
Tara Donovan (b. 1969 in Queens, NY)
Marlene Dumas (b. 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa)
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970 in Charleston, SC)
LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982 in Braddock, PA)
Nan Goldin (b. 1953 in Washington, D.C.)
Mona Hatoum (b. 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon)
Chantal Joffe RA (b. 1969 in St. Albans, VT)
Caitlin Keogh (b. 1982 in Anchorage, AK)
Deana Lawson (b. 1979 in Rochester, NY)
Simone Leigh (b. 1967 in Chicago, IL)
Nalini Malani (b. 1946 in Karachi, Pakistan)
Rania Matar (b. 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982 in San Bernardino, CA)
Zanele Muholi (b. 1972 in Umlazi, South Africa)
Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya)
Alice Neel (b. 1900 in Merion Square, PA; d. 1984 in New York)
Cady Noland (b. 1956 in Washington, D.C.)
Lorraine O’Grady (b. 1934 in Boston, MA)
Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985 in Ife, Nigeria)
Catherine Opie (b. 1961 in Sandusky, OH)
Cornelia Parker OBE, RA (b. 1956 in Chesire, England)
Thomas Ruff (b. 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, West Germany)
Doris Salcedo (b. 1958 in Bogotá, Colombia)
Collier Schorr (b. 1963 in New York)
Joan Semmel (b. 1932 in New York)
Cindy Sherman (b. 1954 in Glen Ridge, NJ)
Diane Simpson (b. 1935 in Joliet, IL)
Henry Taylor (b. 1958 in Ventura, CA)
Gail Thacker (b. 1959 in Providence, RI)
Nari Ward (b. 1963 in St. Andrew, Jamaica)
The Artist’s Voice: Zanele Muholi
Thu, Nov 19, 5:30 PM
Digital + Free
Influential South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi discusses their work, including the ongoing portraiture series Faces and Phases, select works from which are on view in i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Time, in conversation with Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
The Artist’s Voice: Rania Matar
Thu, Dec 3, 6:30 PM
Digital + Free
Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, chats with Rania Matar about the artist’s Across Windows series of portraits taken in and around Boston during COVID-19. Hear more about Matar’s process for making art during an ongoing pandemic, an example of which is included in i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times.
Virtual Celebration: i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times
Wed, Dec 9, 7 PM
The event is a premiere benefit for ICA Members +
Celebrate the opening of i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times, a new major exhibition reveling in the power of experiencing art in person. Hear from all four curators in conversation about the exhibition and their experience curating in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest. Get premiere access by becoming an ICA member.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Support for i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times is provided by First Republic Bank.
Additional support is generously provided by Lori and Dennis Baldwin and The Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation; Ed Berman and Kate McDonough; Clark and Susana Bernard; Kate and Chuck Brizius; Paul and Katie Buttenwieser; Stephanie and John Connaughton; Karen and Brian Conway; Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena; Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest; Bridgitt and Bruce Evans; the Ewald Family Foundation; James and Audrey Foster; Hilary and Geoffrey Grove; Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation; Jodi and Hal Hess; Marina Kalb and David Feinberg; Barbara Lee; Tristin and Martin Mannion; Aedie and John McEvoy; Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick; The Red Elm Tree Charitable Foundation; Charles and Fran Rodgers; Mark and Marie Schwartz; Kambiz and Nazgol Shahbazi; Kim Sinatra; Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III; and anonymous donors.
The Artist’s Voice: Zanele Muholi is made possible, in part, by the Bridgitt and Bruce Evans Public Program Fund.
The Artist’s Voice: Rania Matar is made possible, in part, by The Ronni Casty Lecture Fund and the Bridgitt and Bruce Evans Public Program Fund.
William Kentridge, KABOOM!, 2018. Installation view, William Kentridge: Let Us Try for Once, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2019. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York. © William Kentridge
(Boston, MA—October 23, 2020) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents the U.S. museum premiere of William Kentridge’s KABOOM! (2018), a recent acquisition and room-filling multimedia installation that addresses the history of African porters drafted into service for German, British, and French colonial powers during World War I. KABOOM! is a seventeen-minute, three-channel video set to a rousing orchestral score of both African and European musical traditions co-composed by Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi. The exhibition opens to members on Wednesday, November 18 and at ICA Free Thursday Night on November 19 for the public. Advance timed tickets required at icaboston.org/tickets. On view through May 23, 2021, KABOOM! is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.
“For over fifty years, William Kentridge has created gripping and profound works that address the human condition and the history of social injustice in South Africa, specifically the prolonged effects of colonialism and the apartheid system. Using a variety of mediums from drawing, animation, film, and performance, he transforms painful histories into powerful stories that evoke the trauma and endurance of colonial legacies. The themes of Kentridge’s significant work KABOOM! are particularly resonant during this time of global pain and reckoning,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Presenting this work, newly acquired for the ICA Collection, deepens our commitment to share the art of William Kentridge with Boston audiences.”
Projected onto a scale model of the stage used in Kentridge’s theatrical production The Head & the Load (2018), which premiered at Tate London and later at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, KABOOM! employs collage as a narrative medium, “bringing different fragments together to find a provisional history,” as the artist explains. Embodying the theatrical intensity of The Head & the Load at gallery scale, silhouettes of porters march across cut-up fragments of colonial maps alongside the writings of Reverend John Chilembwe, philosopher Frantz Fanon, and artist Tristin Tzara, among others. Its title comes from the Ghanaian proverb, “the head and the load are the troubles of the neck,” which here recalls both the physical weight of goods, services, and weapons that porters—men, women, and children—carried for colonial soldiers, as well as their place in a global war that violently remade the continent’s borders towards the end of what would become known as the imperialist Scramble for Africa. A way of speaking back to the incomplete story of colonialism, KABOOM! envelops the gallery in a visual landscape that traverses memory and narrative, revealing our understanding of history to be a fragmented relationship to the past.
William Kentridge (b. 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a multi-disciplinary artist best known for wide-ranging works that examine the paradoxes of settler colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. His multidisciplinary practice weaves together drawing, print, animation, and more, to recompose our understandings of the past, emphasizing, as he says, “what we’ve chosen not to remember.” One of the most significant artists of our time, Kentridge has exhibited widely internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Reina Sofia, Madrid; Whitechapel Gallery, London; SF MoMA, San Francisco; and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, among many others. His work has been included in group exhibitions, and he has participated in several international exhibitions of contemporary art, including the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; the Venice Biennale; Gwangju Biennial, Korea; Liverpool Biennial, UK; Documenta; and the Moscow Biennial, among others. Educated at the University Witwatersrand and the Johannesburg Art Foundation, Kentridge is the recipient of numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Royal College of Art London. With this presentation of KABOOM!, Kentridge returns to the ICA in the first solo presentation since his 2014 exhibition Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time.
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
KABOOM! was acquired through the generosity of Amy and David Abrams, James and Audrey Foster, Charlotte Wagner and Herbert S. Wagner III, Jeanne L. Wasserman Art Acquisition Fund, and Fotene and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund.
