Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012. Nine-channel video projection (color, sound; 64:00 minutes). Gift of Graham and Ann Gund to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Gund Gallery at Kenyon College. Photo by Elísabet Davids. Courtesy the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík. © Ragnar Kjartansson
One of the best-loved works in the ICA’s permanent collection, The Visitors is the first newly installed exhibition at the museum following months of closure
(Boston, MA—September 16, 2020) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors, a monumental, nine-channel sound and video installation of a performance staged at Rokeby Farm, a historic forty-three-room estate in upstate New York. The first newly installed exhibition at the museum following months of closure during the global COVID-19 pandemic, The Visitors (2012) is a truly beloved artwork in the ICA’s permanent collection, one that continually inspires and moves our community. The exhibition opens to members on Wednesday, September 30 at 10 AM and to the public on Thursday, October 1 at 5 PM. Advance timed tickets required at icaboston.org/tickets. On view through August 15, 2021, this presentation is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
Each of the individual audio and video channels shows a musician or group of musicians, including Kjartansson, playing instruments either alone or in groups, isolated yet in unison, occupying different rooms of the romantically dilapidated house. The musical composition—whose lyrics come from the poem “Feminine Ways,” written by artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir—coheres in the work’s installation, presenting an emotionally dynamic and moving ensemble performance Kjartansson refers to as a “feminine nihilistic gospel song.” Through its unique arrangement of music in space, The Visitors creates a layered portrait of the house and its musical inhabitants. For some, the prolonged experience of sheltering in place—characterized at times as being alone together—has dramatically changed our conception of home and complicated our relationships to one another. As the museum reopens and visitors return, we turn to this familiar work for its range of resonant themes, its capacity to comfort and heal, and with the knowledge that our experience of it at this time will be different.
Virtual Play Date: In Harmony
Fri, Sep 25, 10 AM, 2:45 PM, 3:30 PM + 4:30 PM
Interactive workshops on Zoom with advance registration
Inspired by The Visitors, explore how music, art, and movement resonate through us. Families are invited to explore, look, create, and move as we dive into contemporary art and making. Please note the new Fall Play Date schedule, beginning this month: Little Play Date from 10–10:45 AM for families with children ages 5 and under; Play Date After School starting at 2:45 PM for families with children of all ages. Virtual Play Dates occur on the last Friday of the month. Schedule and program descriptions will be posted closer to the event date. Workshops will be held on Zoom and will be live and interactive. Advanced registration required.
Virtual First Fridays: A Visit with Oompa
Fri, Oct 2, 8 PM
Streaming on Facebook, Twitch, Vimeo, and the ICA website
Boston-based performer, rapper, and poet, Oompa will take over First Fridays with a performance inspired by and in the spirit of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors, a tribute filmed in the ICA’s building!
Virtual Public Celebration
Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors
Wed, Oct 21
Steaming on Facebook, Twitch, Vimeo, and the ICA website
Join us to virtually celebrate the opening of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors, with special appearances and tributes to this beloved artwork in the ICA’s permanent collection, one that continually inspires and moves our community.
Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Reykjavik, Iceland) has had solo exhibitions at the Reykjavík Art Museum, the Barbican Centre, London, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park, Washington D.C., the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the New Museum, New York, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna. Kjartansson participated in The Encyclopedic Palace at the Venice Biennale in 2013, Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2014, and he represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The artist is the recipient of the 2015 Artes Mundi’s Derek Williams Trust Purchase Award, and Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award. The artist lives and works in Reykjavík.
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 ICA is committed to maintaining a respectful and safe environment for all at the museum.
ICA Kids and Family programs are supported, in part, by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, the Willow Tree Fund, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and the Raymond T. & Ann T. Mancini Family Foundation.
Sterling Ruby, Alabaster SR08-2, 2008. Cast acrylic, 45 x 92 3/4 inches (114.3 x 235.6 cm). Courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio, Los Angeles. © Sterling Ruby
Dressed in a bright yellow shirt, a plaster of sticky sweat, and a ripe, feral excitement to revisit a museum, I entered the ICA at 12 PM on a Thursday in the middle of August. I wandered, waited. I was the only one in line. The only one in the bathroom. The only one on the stairs. And when I had mastered the fourth flight, I suddenly realized, wheezing, with a touch of embarrassment, that except for the Visitor Assistants, I was entirely alone.
In a lull, everything is amplified. As I walked through the galleries, the jangling of my keys sounded like sixty bells played by the tone-deaf; the clanging of a few loose nickels, like a penny piñata; and the merciless crinkling of my KIND bar wrapper, a personal purgatory. When I cracked my knuckles, it echoed. I felt like an elephant dancing in a jewelry shop.
A flurry of motion, trapped in sudden stillness.
In this way I would describe Sterling Ruby’s Alabaster SR08-2. Ruby is an artist of multitudes, frequently creating works that transcend medium, demonstrating a clear adroitness in work with wood, urethane, clay, dye, cast acrylic, felt, fabric, and so on, constructing mammoth sculptures, hanging mobiles, canvas works, and multitudes of other forms. And yet, one common thread ties his work together: tension. The contradiction that inevitably exists when an action, an idea, is caught between the fluid and solid, motion and stillness.
His Alabaster works resemble two liquids intermingling, SR08-2 reminiscent of milk dissolving into coffee, trapped in the moment just before diffusion. SCXV3ST/BD can be seen as a macabre drop of blood, dripping, arrested eternally in the moment prior to its splatter and spread. Even the work BC (5289) seems to encapsulate the crashing of a wave, captured just before its subsequent recoil into the water.
After the exhibit, I slinked back down the steps, staring frog-eyed at the closed doors, the empty halls. Somehow, the feeling of entrapment between mobility and stasis in Sterling’s work encapsulates the reopening of our museum, our city, perfectly. As if, slowly, and unpredictably, we are caught in time, trying our best to return to normalcy during COVID-19: motionless as our lives are put on pause, and simultaneously, tentatively kinetic as stores reopen, restaurants bustle, and even museums, the ones we know so well, so different today with their masks and sanitizers, and yet so constant, challenging and art-holding, make space for us, too.
It will all keep moving, SR08-2 reminds us, even if we are caught in this moment, just for now.
Naomi Mirny is a recent Brookline High School graduate and a former member of the ICA Teen Arts Council. She is currently studying English at McGill University and hopes to continue to mindfully engage with artwork and art institutions in Montreal.
Friday Art Notes are personal reflections on works of art shown or in the permanent collection of the ICA, written by ICA staff, volunteers, and supporters. Read more
This activity is adaptable for beginners to experts, ideally ages 5 and up. Younger artists may need help making tape loops. Great for individuals, groups, and families to work on together at home.
Inspired by Tara Donovan’s sculpture Nebulous made with Scotch tape, we invite you to play with everyday materials which are often found at home and not typically thought of as art supplies. By sticking, stacking, clipping, and positioning mundane objects in new ways, we can transform objects into exciting and unexpected sculptures. Experiment with building temporary sculptures using loops of tape, binder clips, or whatever else you have access to and have permission to use for artmaking. Be creative and share with the world what you make!
You will need:
Everyday objects in multiples. Some ideas:
Check out the video demo for tips and a cat cameo!
Check out the video demo for tips and a cat cameo!
Clip one binder clip onto one silver wing of another binder clip.
This lesson was developed by Brooke Scibelli, Family and Art Lab Programs Coordinator.
Create your own unique drum to make music!
Using different materials for your drum lets you experiment with different sounds— high, low, short, and long—and make different beats and rhythms. Join musician Maria Finkelmeier in using materials found in your kit to make a drum!
See and hear Finkelmeier play with the drum she made in the following video:
Materials:
How to make a drum:
1. Place a box on your table surface so the open side is towards the floor.
2. Cut or tear off the lid of the empty egg carton. Leave only the bottom half that holds the individual eggs.
3. Tape the bottom half of the egg carton to the side of the box furthest away from you, parallel to the ground. The bottom of the egg carton should be pointed away from you.
4. Tape the milk jug to the top of the box, aligned with the left edge.
5. Decorate your drum with markers and more!
How to be a drummer:
Grab your drumsticks and explore all of the sounds you can make with your drum. Strike the sides of the box, the top of the box, and the milk carton, and then slide your stick along the egg carton.
Explore making beats! A beat is a repeated pattern and supports the melody of a song.
Listen to your favorite music and jam along. Can you use all of the different sounds of your drum? Is the plastic sound higher than the cardboard? Does the egg carton sound like a Guiro (hollow gourd instrument in South America)?
This activity was developed by Maria Finkelmeier. Named a “one-woman dynamo” by The Boston Globe, Finkelmeier is a percussionist, composer, public artist, educator, and arts entrepreneur. Maria has created large-scale multimedia events in public spaces from Cincinnati to Northern Sweden, with several locations in Boston, including Fenway Park and Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.
(Boston, MA—August 25, 2020) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) announces its advance schedule of exhibitions through 2022. Upcoming exhibitions include a major collection show titled i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times featuring works by Kader Attia, Firelei Báez, Louise Bourgeois, Ndijeka Akuniyli Crosby, Nan Goldin, Simone Leigh, Doris Salcedo, Henry Taylor, and more; the first museum exhibition devoted to the work of the multi-disciplinary artist and designer Virgil Abloh; a newly commissioned, monumental sculpture by Firelei Báez at the ICA Watershed; and the first museum survey dedicated to the work of Deana Lawson.
All exhibition dates are subject to change. For more information and to confirm schedule, please contact Margaux Leonard at mleonard@icaboston.org or 617-478-3176.
Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors
September 30, 2020–August 15, 2021
The first newly installed exhibition at the museum following months of closure during the global COVID-19 pandemic, The Visitors is a beloved artwork in the ICA’s permanent collection, one that continually inspires and moves our community. A portrayal of friendship, love, and loss, The Visitors is a monumental, nine-channel sound and video installation of a performance staged at Rokeby Farm, a historic forty-three-room estate in upstate New York. Each of the individual audio and video channels features musicians playing instruments either alone or in small groups, isolated yet in unison, occupying different rooms of the romantically dilapidated estate. The musical composition coheres in the work’s installation, presenting a dynamic and moving ensemble performance Kjartansson refers to as a “feminine nihilistic gospel song.” Through its unique arrangement of music in space, The Visitors creates a layered portrait of the house and its musical inhabitants. For some, the prolonged experience of sheltering-in-place—characterized at times as being “alone together”—has dramatically changed our conception of home and our relationships to one another. As the museum reopens, we turn to this familiar work for its range of resonant themes, its capacity to comfort and heal, and with the knowledge that our experience of it at this time will be different. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times
November 18, 2020–May 23, 2021
i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times celebrates the power of experiencing art in person. This exhibition, which borrows its title from a Henry Taylor painting in the ICA collection, is conceived as an invitation to our visitors to create a personal connection with works of art. Collaboratively and virtually organized in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest, i’m yours is presented within a dramatic, raw architectural space as a series of small galleries, each offering a different artistic perspective to emphasize that the stories museums may tell through art are never fixed but always in process. Comprising unique encounters with new acquisitions and iconic works from the ICA’s collection, the exhibition’s groupings, or scenes, address a range of topics, including ideas of home and history, social and material transformation, and frames of identity in portraiture and sculpture. Including works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kader Attia, Firelei Báez, Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Simone Leigh, Doris Salcedo, and many others, i’m yours sparks wonder, encourages questions, challenges assumptions, and provides a space for reflection. 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.
William Kentridge: KABOOM!
November 18, 2020–May 23, 2021
The wide-ranging, interdisciplinary work of William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) examines the prolonged effects of settler colonialism and the apartheid system in South Africa. Through drawing, performance, film, and opera, Kentridge recomposes historical narratives and proposes new understandings of the past, emphasizing, as he says, “what we’ve chosen not to remember.” The ICA presents the U.S. museum premiere of KABOOM! (2018), a recent major acquisition and room-filling multimedia installation. KABOOM! tells the story of the two million African porters conscripted into service for German, British, and French colonial powers during World War I. Set to a rousing, orchestral score co-composed by Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi, KABOOM! employs collage, drawing, and animation on repurposed archival documents to embody at gallery scale the theatrical intensity of the artist’s full-scale production of The Head & the Load (2018), a work whose title references the Ghanaian proverb, “The head and the load are the troubles of the neck.” A way of speaking back to the incomplete story of colonialism and exploitative labor systems, KABOOM! envelops the gallery in a visual landscape that traverses memory and narrative, revealing history to be a fragmented and authorless relationship to the past. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.
Eva LeWitt
Mar 21, 2021–Oct 23, 2022
The vibrant sculptures of New York–based artist Eva LeWitt (b. 1985, Spoleto, Italy) transform industrially manufactured materials such as coated mesh, polyurethane foam, and latex into hand-fashioned environmental arrangements of hanging geometric forms and gradations of undulating color. For the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, LeWitt will conceive of a monumental hanging wall sculpture made of colorful bands of coated mesh fabric whose shifting linear composition creates a number of interlocking circular forms. As the work’s crosshatched woven surfaces and fields of color overlap and respond to ambient conditions, an optical moiré effect is produced, creating a dynamic perceptual experience that vibrates throughout the museum’s interior. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
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 and as a trade site and point of entry and 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. A program of cross-disciplinary offerings will mirror the artist’s range of interests across music and design. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
Raúl de Nieves
Aug 25, 2021–Jul 24, 2022
New York–based artist Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Michoacán, Mexico) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and musician whose multifaceted practice ranges from stained-glass-style narrative paintings to energetic performances, to densely adorned figurative sculptures encrusted with bells, beads, bangles, sequins, and other everyday materials. These opulent sculptures reference ritual costumes in Mexican culture and evoke other global theatrical traditions, from Japanese kabuki to circus performance to religious processional attire. De Nieves’s distinctive visual language draws from Mexican craft traditions, religious iconography, and mythology to explore the transformational possibilities of adornment and the mutability of identity. This is his first museum presentation in Boston. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
Deana Lawson
Oct 27, 2021–Mar 6, 2022
This exhibition is the first museum survey dedicated to the work of Deana Lawson (b. 1979 in 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 identities. 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 large-format color photographs are highly staged and 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 catalog, featuring the voices and 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, 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.
The ICA is committed to maintaining a respectful and safe environment for all at the museum.
Credits
i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times
Support for i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times is provided by First Republic Bank.
William Kentridge: KABOOM!
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.
Eva LeWitt
Eva LeWitt is presented by Max Mara.
Additional support is provided by Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest and Barbara H. Lloyd.
Firelei Báez
Firelei Báez is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Cara Kuball, Curatorial Project Manager.
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 Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator of the 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.
The exhibition tour for Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is made possible by Kenneth C. Griffin.
Major support for the Boston presentation of Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” is provided by Encore Boston Harbor.
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.
William Kentridge: KABOOM!
William Kentridge: KABOOM! is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.
KABOOM! was acquired with major support from Amy and David Abrams, with additional generous support from 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.
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.
Images
Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012. Nine-channel video projection (color, sound; 64:00 minutes). Gift of Graham and Ann Gund to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Gund Gallery at Kenyon College. Photo by Elísabet Davids. Courtesty the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík. © Ragnar Kjartansson | Henry Taylor, i’m yours, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 73 ⅛ × 74 ¼ inches (185.7 × 188.6 cm). Acquried through the generosity of the Acquisitions Circle. © Henry Taylor | William Kentridge, KABOOM!, 2018. Three-channel HD film installation, model stage, paper props, found objects, and three mini-projectors with stands, 75 ¼ x 196 ¼ x 40 ⅜ inches (191 x 498.5 x 102.5 cm). Acquired with major support from Amy and David Abrams, with additional generous support from 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. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman. © William Kentridge | Installation view, Eva LeWitt, VI, VII, Oslo, 2018. Courtesy the artist and VI, VII, Oslo. Photo by Christian Tunge. © Eva LeWitt | Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed installation rendering, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Rendering by Nate Garner. | Installation view, Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. © Virgil Abloh | Raúl de Nieves, Fina Vision, 2019. Vintage military suit, sequins, metal bells, threads, glue, cardboard, plastic beads, tape, trims, and mannequin. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Company, New York © Raúl de Nieves | Deana Lawson, 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.
Photo by Elisa Hamilton
Using dance, chalk, and imagination, create your own Dance Spot on your neighborhood sidewalk!
Dance Spot is a public art project by artist Elisa Hamilton, who creates pop-up dance floors on city sidewalks and invites the public to dance.
Materials:
How to make a Dance Spot:
1. Dance: Choose a song that makes you dance, feel the rhythm in your body, and create dance moves. Notice where your feet move and where your body travels.
2. Map: On a piece of paper, draw a map of your dance. Draw footsteps to show where your feet start, and where they move. Use arrows, squiggly lines, and action words like “Jump” and “Clap” to show the moves of your dance.
3. Chalk: Using chalk, draw a life-size copy of your map on the sidewalk. Trace around your shoes to make footsteps (your new stencil!). Make it big and bold for everyone to see! Now you have your Dance Spot!
4. Dance Spot: Play your song and show your moves! Teach your dance to a friend or neighbor, and invite them to use the Dance Spot, too.
This activity was developed by Elisa H. Hamilton, a socially engaged multimedia artist. Elisa creates inclusive artworks that emphasize shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects, and experiences.
Hope for the future is what keeps us moving forward, but it can take many forms. What does hope look like to you? Fill your stars with hopes to hang in places that need extra light.
Materials:
How to make Hopeful Stars:
This activity was developed by Chanel Thervil, a Haitian American artist and educator. Chanel uses varying combinations of abstraction and portraiture to convene communal dialogue around culture, social issues, and existential questions. At the core of her practice lies a desire to empower and inspire tenderness and healing among communities of color through the arts.
Photo by Mel Taing
This activity invites you to explore your home and neighborhood in search of personal peace.
To “fill your cup” is to fill yourself with comfort and safety. How do you fill your cup? What objects can you find that represent this sense of security? Explore the different ways you fill your cup today, and help someone fill theirs in return.
Materials:
1. Use scissors to cut out the city skyline along the dotted line. Include the circle and tabs.
2. Fold tabs and circle at the fold lines.
3. Bring the left and right sides of the city skyline together, creating a cylindrical shape. Dot the tabs with glue and press to close the shape. Fold in the circle to make the bottom of your cup. Dot the tabs with glue to close the bottom of your cup.
4. Explore your home or neighborhood and collect (or draw on paper) the things that make you feel safe, comforted, and peaceful. Fill your cup with these things and place in a special place in your home to visit and reflect on often. Help others fill their cup!
This activity was developed by Mel Taing, an East Boston photographer and filmmaker. As a child of Cambodian refugees in America, Mel is deeply interested in visually exploring concepts of intergenerational trauma, racial identity, spirituality, and resilience in community.
Courtesy of the artist and Bortolami Gallery.
Based on Caitlin Keogh’s painting, Blank Melody, Old Wall, in the ICA’s permanent collection.
You are invited to explore the imagery in this vivid and detailed artwork closely through the act of coloring it in. After completing your new drawing, view Keogh’s finished work here.
Materials:
Painter Caitlin Keogh considers the history of gender and representation, the articulation of personal style, and the construction of artistic identity. With a background in technical illustration and an interest in clothing design, interior decoration, and art history, Keogh’s vivid painterly style combines the graphic lines of hand-drawn commercial illustration with the bold, flat colors of the applied arts—design and decoration of everyday objects.
Nari Ward, Savior, 1996. Shopping cart, plastic garbage bags, cloth, bottles, metal fence, earth, wheel, mirror, chair, and clocks, 128 × 36 × 23 inches (325.1 × 91.4 × 58.4 cm). Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Photo by Charles Mayer Photography. © Nari Ward
Every morning when I walk from South Station to the ICA, the city reveals the brutality, inequality, and injustices that it tries to cover with a night sky. Besides the regular commuters every morning, I salute the usual occupants of the streets. Depending on the season, sometimes they have the prime location facing the ocean, and sometimes their home on the Harborwalk is under water. And every morning, when I see the shopping carts parked at the oceanfront, Nari Ward’s Savior comes to my mind.
Resembling the carts used by homeless or nomadic people, Savior rises up in its grandeur, while also becoming heavy with all the materials and memories attached to it. In contrast to the invisibility assigned to this population by the ignorant eyes of passersby, Savior asserts its visibility and asks for engagement and contemplation from the viewer. Like Ward claiming city streets in his 1996 video Pushing Savior, Savior claims its own space in the museum — and may be taking a step further as it demands its place in the untold histories within the walls of the museum.
Savior not only contemplates identity, representation, and politics in the streets – it also successfully mimics the transactions of the consumer world. There is always something left over, something collectible, in this world, and the values of these objects might be the same in essence; in an unjust world, values are imbalanced too. The clocks collected in a blue plastic bag hanging from the corner of Ward’s work are not any different from the objects that lay in the storage of a collector – maybe they are even luckier to be out there in the world.
After an encounter with Savior, as with many powerful artworks, your relationship with your surroundings changes and your eyes start to see, discover, and understand.
Mehtap Yagci has been with the ICA since 2018 as Executive Assistant. She moved to Boston from Istanbul, and holds degrees in Cultural Studies and Contemporary Art Theory. In her spare time she enjoys cooking Turkish food and connecting with her friends and family scattered all over the world.
Friday Art Notes are personal reflections on works of art shown or in the permanent collection of the ICA, written by ICA staff, volunteers, and supporters. Read more
