Simone Leigh: Façade, 2022. Thatch, steel, and wood, dimensions variable. Satellite, 2022. Bronze, 24 feet × 10 feet × 7 feet 7 inches (7.3 × 3 × 2.3 m) (overall). Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo by Timothy Schenck. © Simone Leigh
(April 21, 2022, Venice, Italy) For the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the United States Pavilion presents Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Simone Leigh: Sovereignty features a new body of work made for the United States Pavilion. Characterized by an interest in performativity and affect, Leigh’s expansive practice parses the construction of Black femme subjectivity. Her large-scale sculptural works join forms derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, rendering them via materials and processes associated with the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora. Sovereignty commingles disparate histories and narratives, including those related to ritual performances of the Baga peoples in Guinea, early Black American material culture from the Edgefield District in South Carolina, and the landmark 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. With a series of new bronzes and ceramics both outside and inside the Pavilion, Leigh intervenes imaginatively to fill gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities.
The works in Sovereignty collectively extend the artist’s ongoing inquiry into the theme of self-determination. The exhibition’s title speaks to notions of self-governance and independence, for both the individual and the collective. To be sovereign is to not be subject to another’s authority, another’s desires, or another’s gaze, but rather to be the author of one’s own history. Many of the featured sculptures interrogate the extraction of images and objects from across the African diaspora and their circulation as souvenirs in service of colonial narratives. Though Leigh’s figural works present their subjects as autonomous and self-sufficient, they do not simply celebrate the capacity of Black women to overcome oppressive circumstances, but rather indict the conditions that so often require them to affirm their own humanity. Acknowledging the capacity of Leigh’s work to articulate an expansive view of Black female experience, American author and scholar Saidiya Hartman has described the artist’s address of the Black feminine as “an architecture of possibility.” Hartman’s conception of “critical fabulation”—a strategy that invites historians, artists, and critics to creatively fill the gaps of history—provides a resonant framework for approaching Leigh’s work. “In order to tell the truth,” Leigh proposes, “you need to invent what might be missing from the archive, to collapse time, to concern yourself with issues of scale, to formally move things around in a way that reveals something more true than fact.”
Leigh’s exhibition continues beyond the U.S. Pavilion with Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a convening of Black women scholars, performers, writers, and artists in October 2022, organized by Rashida Bumbray. The project reflects the collaborative ethos that is characteristic of Leigh’s practice, and pays homage to a long history of Black femme collectivity, communality, and care.
Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, said, “We congratulate Simone Leigh on her historic achievement as the first Black woman to represent the United States at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. On this international stage, her work will be a beacon for American art. Simone Leigh’s depiction of the reality, diversity, and complexity of the American experience will educate and inspire people around the globe.”
Considering the U.S. Pavilion itself as a sculpture, Leigh has transformed its architecture with Façade, an installation of thatch roofing that resembles a 1930s West African palace. Leigh’s exterior intervention introduces contrasting forms and materials that carry their own histories and interact with the original neoclassical building. The gesture draws upon the legacy of the landmark 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, mounted by the French to display the cultures and peoples of the lands then under European colonial control.
Standing at the center of the U.S. Pavilion’s outdoor forecourt is Satellite, a monumental, 24-foot-high sculpture. The work recalls a traditional D’mba, a headdress shaped like a female bust created by the Baga peoples of the Guinea coast that is used during ritual performances to communicate with ancestors. A cast satellite dish tops the sculpture, echoing the D’mba’s function as a communicative conduit.
Entering the Pavilion’s galleries, visitors first encounter a large reflecting pool featuring Last Garment, a bronze depicting a laundress at work. The work references a late 19th century photograph taken in Jamaica titled Mammy’s Last Garment. Postcards bearing such imagery played a key role in supporting stereotypes created by the burgeoning Anglophone Caribbean tourism industry and these souvenirs formed a part of a visual economy that constituted an idea of Jamaica as imagined by its colonizers.
Two large works occupy the next gallery. In Anonymous, Leigh draws upon an 1882 photograph, titled The Wilde Woman of Aiken, depicting a Black woman seated at a table with an Edgefield face jug, an important example of early Black American material culture. The racist photograph was intended as a satire of Oscar Wilde and as a rejection of the poet’s aesthetic theory that anything can be beautiful. Leigh’s face jug is transposed nearby and enlarged to over 5 feet tall. Appended across the surface of the work are forms resembling cowrie shells the size and shape of the watermelons the artist uses as molds to generate them.
Sentinel, standing at the center of the rotunda gallery, references an important genre of African diasporic artwork called power objects, believed to possess inherent divine energy and knowledge. Leigh’s sculpture combines an elongated female form with an object traditionally used in fertility rituals. The work’s title, which denotes the act of watching over, casts the figure as an observant presence within the exhibition.
The sculpture Sharifa and the film Conspiracy are joined in a call and response in the Pavilion’s penultimate gallery. The film captures aspects of the sculpture’s making, and together, they expand on narratives of care, labor, and creation. Sculpted from life after the writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Sharifa is the first portrait made by Leigh. Along with artist Lorraine O’Grady, Rhodes-Pitts is also featured in the film Conspiracy, made collaboratively with filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich.
Conceived as a chorus of figures, the group of works assembled in the final gallery are crafted in ceramic and raffia, two materials that have long been central to Leigh’s practice. Clay forms the basis of most of Leigh’s artworks—including her bronzes, which are all first sculpted in clay—and the artist pushes the medium’s possibilities through scale and method. Taken together, the works in this room demonstrate Leigh’s continued use of forms and processes that have traditionally been gendered and that send up essentialist ideas of the Black femme body. The ICA is organizing Leigh’s first survey exhibition—including works from the U.S. Pavilion—and a major monograph to be presented in Boston in March 2023. Following its debut at the ICA, the exhibition will tour nationally to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (Fall/Winter 2023/24), and a joint presentation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and California African American Museum (CAAM) in Spring/Summer 2024 in Los Angeles, CA.
A statement by U.S. Pavilion Co-Commissioners Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director, and Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, of the ICA/Boston can be found here.
Over the past two decades, Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago, IL) has created an expansive body of work in sculpture, video, and performance that centers Black femme interiority. Inflected by Black feminist theory, Leigh’s practice intervenes imaginatively to fill gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities. Leigh’s sculptural works join forms derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, rendering them via materials and processes associated with the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora. The collaborative ethos that characterizes Leigh’s videos and public programs pays homage to a long history of Black female collectivity, communality, and care.
In 2019, Leigh was the first artist commissioned for the High Line Plinth, New York. Recent exhibitions include The Hugo Boss Prize 2018: Simone Leigh, Loophole of Retreat at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2019); the 2019 Whitney Biennial; Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (2017) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Psychic Friends Network (2016) at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London; Hammer Projects: Simone Leigh (2016–17) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; inHarlem: Simone Leigh (2016–17), a public installation presented by The Studio Museum in Harlem at Marcus Garvey Park, New York; The Waiting Room (2016) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Free People’s Medical Clinic (2014), a project commissioned by Creative Time. Leigh’s work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the ICA/Boston, among others.
The works that comprise Leigh’s exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion will be featured in her first museum survey exhibition at the ICA in 2023, which will subsequently tour to museums throughout the United States. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Leigh’s work.
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.
The 2022 U.S. Pavilion offers robust educational initiatives to engage students in the U.S. and Italy. The ICA has partnered with Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, on a two-semester long seminar to immerse students in the art and ideas of Simone Leigh, and introduce them to the history of the U.S. Pavilion and Leigh’s exhibition in Venice. In Italy, the ICA is working with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice to organize a professional development program for middle and high school educators in the Veneto region. This workshop, modeled after the ICA’s nationally recognized teen arts education program, provides educators the tools to explore the work of Simone Leigh and create curriculum designed to inspire, empower, and educate their students. Learn more about these projects here: simoneleighvenice2022.org/partners.
Established in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia is acknowledged today as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions. La Biennale stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends and organizes events in its specific sectors of Arts (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934), alongside research and training activities. The International Art Exhibition is considered the most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world, introducing hundreds of thousands of visitors to exciting new art every two years. The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (April 23–November 27, 2022) is directed by Cecilia Alemani.
The United States Pavilion, a building in the neoclassical style in the Giardini della Biennale, Venice, opened on May 4, 1930. Since 1986, the U.S. Pavilion has been owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and managed by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, which works closely with the U.S. Department of State and exhibition curators to install and maintain all official U.S. exhibitions presented in the Pavilion. Every two years, museum curators from across the country detail their visions for the U.S. Pavilion in proposals that are reviewed by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE), a group comprising curators, museum directors, and artists, who then submit their recommendations to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Past exhibitions can be viewed on the Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s website at guggenheim-venice.it.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) builds relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries through academic, cultural, sports, professional, and private exchanges, as well as public-private partnerships and mentoring programs. These exchange programs improve foreign relations and strengthen the national security of the United States, support U.S. international leadership, and provide a broad range of domestic benefits by helping break down barriers that often divide us, like religion, politics, language, and ethnicity, and geography. ECA programs build connections that engage and empower people and motivate them to become leaders and thinkers, to develop new skills, and to find connections that will create positive change in their communities. For more information, please visit exchanges.state.gov/us.
Please visit the U.S. Pavilion’s website for more information about the artist, the ICA, and the Biennale Arte 2022: simoneleighvenice2022.org.
Polskin Arts & Communications Counselors, USPavilion@finnpartners.com
Simone Leigh is presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in partnership with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
With warmest thanks, the ICA/Boston gratefully acknowledges the following philanthropic partners for their magnificent support.
Major support is provided by the Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Lead corporate support is provided by eu2be.
Generous support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, The Girlfriend Fund, and Wagner Foundation.
Leadership gifts are provided by Amy and David Abrams; Stephanie Formica Connaughton and John Connaughton; Bridgitt and Bruce Evans; James and Audrey Foster; Agnes Gund; Jodi and Hal Hess; Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation; Barbara and Amos Hostetter; Brigette Lau Collection; Kristen and Kent Lucken; Tristin and Martin Mannion; Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick; Gina and Stuart Peterson; Helen and Charles Schwab; the Terra Foundation for American Art; and VIA Art Fund.
Essential support is also provided by Suzanne Deal Booth; Kate and Chuck Brizius; Richard Chang; Karen and Brian Conway; Steven Corkin and Dan Maddalena; Federico Martin Castro Debernardi; Jennifer Epstein and Bill Keravuori; Esta Gordon Epstein and Robert Epstein; Negin and Oliver Ewald; Alison and John Ferring; Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman; Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation; Peggy J. Koenig and Family; The Holly Peterson Foundation; David and Leslie Puth with Mark and Marie Schwartz; Cindy and Howard Rachofsky; Leslie Riedel and Scott Friend; Kim Sinatra; Tobias and Kristin Welo; Lise and Jeffrey Wilks; Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth; Jill and Nick Woodman; Nicole Zatlyn and Jason Weiner; Marilyn Lyng and Dan O’Connell; Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg Foundation; Kate and Ajay Agarwal; Eunhak Bae and Robert Kwak; Jeremiah Schneider Joseph; Barbara H. Lloyd; Cynthia and John Reed; and anonymous donors.
Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Swinguerra, 2019. Two-channel video (color, sound; 21:16 minutes), dimensions variable. General Acquisition Fund, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund, and Anonymous Art Acquisition Fund. Courtesy the artists and Fortes D’aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. © Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca
(Boston, MA—February 8, 2022) On March 31, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra, a recent acquisition and room-filling, immersive video installation. Swinguerra (2019) is a 21-minute, two-channel video work that focuses on competitive dancers, including transgender and nonbinary performers, in queer communities of color on the outskirts of Recife, Brazil. This will be the first solo presentation of the installation in a U.S. museum since it premiered at the Brazil Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Organized by Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra will be on view through September 5, 2022, concurrent with A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now, which celebrates a new generation of artists at the vanguard of contemporary painting.
“We are excited to present Swinguerra for the first time since we acquired it for the ICA Collection,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “The dance and music performance is both exhilarating and a necessary perspective on contemporary Brazilian culture during a time of substantial social and political tension.”
Swinguerra features three contemporary dance styles—swingueira, brega funk, and passinho da maloca—as performed by three competitive dance groups. These mixed dance styles recall Brazil’s colonial and slave trade history, where music and dance functioned as discreet methods of organizing politically under oppressive regimes and in the wake of ongoing social and gender-based violence. The film, whose title fuses two words: swingueira, the dance style, and guerra, the Portuguese word for war or struggle, exceeds genres of documentary and fiction to forward a fluid, narrative experience of movement, choreography, and ideas of self-expression. Fast-paced, athletic, sexy, dreamlike, and aggressive, these dance styles make Swinguerra an exhilarating and unforgettable viewing experience, illustrating how dance and music offer rich sources of agency, resistance, and community.
Collaborating since 2011, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca create works in video and installation that explore contemporary histories of underground dance and musical genres. Frequently made in collaboration with cinematographer Pedro Sotero, these moving-image works, which they refer to as “documentary musicals,” often center on the South Atlantic diaspora, from the Franco-Indo creole musical genre maloya to frevo dancers and brega singers. Constructing their films collaboratively with the performers, their approach merges the cinematic with the fictional, documentary, and ethnographic to address questions of surveillance, visibility, and creativity in an increasingly connected, postcolonial world.
“Swinguerra explores how these performers use dance and music to create spaces of representation and resistance within larger political systems. The artists’ practice is rooted in a philosophy of collaboration: they frequently work over several years on a project with both the subjects of their films and with colleagues. The collaborative nature of their work means they are very intentional about letting people speak and perform for themselves, foregrounding a celebration of self-possessed knowledge and agency,” said Pullagura.
Working collaboratively since 2011, Wagner & de Burca have shown in exhibitions, biennials and film festivals, including: the 33rd, 35th Panorama de Arte Brasileira, the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, the 20th Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc VideoBrasil (São Paulo, Brazil); the 36th EVA International (Limerick, Ireland); the 5th Skulptur Projekte (Münster, Germany); the 67th, 68th, 69th Berlin International Film Festival (Germany); and the 72nd Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland). In 2020 they took part in Manifesta, the European Nomadic Biennial. In 2019, Wagner & de Burca represented Brazil at the 58th Venice Biennial and unveiled solo presentations at Jumex Museum (Mexico City, Mexico) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Holland). Their work can be found in collections such as: ICA/Boston (Boston, USA), Kadist Art Foundation (France), Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) and Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) (São Paulo, Brazil), Pérez Art Museum, (Miami, USA), and Arts Council of Ireland, among others. The artists are represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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.
Credit
Swinguerra was acquired through the generosity of the General Acquisition Fund, Fotene and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund, and Anonymous Art Acquisition Fund.
Arcmanoro Niles, I Look Just Like My Mama With My Father’s Eyes (Can Time Heal The Guilty), 2021. Oil, acrylic, and glitter on canvas, 74 1/2 × 54 1/2 inches (189.2 × 138.4 cm). Promised gift of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Image courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Lo…
View full credits(Boston, MA—February 8, 2022) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now, an exhibition that celebrates a new generation of artists at the vanguard of contemporary painting. David Antonio Cruz, Louis Fratino, Doron Langberg, Aubrey Levinthal, Gisela McDaniel, Arcmanoro Niles, Celeste Rapone, and Ambera Wellmann are leading figurative painting’s recent revival by depicting what they love—their friends, lovers, and family; studio spaces and homes; and the scenes that make up their everyday. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now will be on view March 31 through September 5, 2022, concurrent with Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra.
Colorful, surprising, and full of life, A Place for Me is a testament to the vitality of contemporary figurative art, reflecting a multitude of styles and approaches to painting through a cross-section of contemporary painting today. Evoking intimacy, community, and the personal in the power to represent oneself in painting, these eight artists claim space for Black, Indigenous, brown, and queer life. Through their work, they consider the politics of seeing and being seen and how painting might register care, tenderness, empathy, and resilience. The exhibition features nearly 40 works arranged by artist.
“Portraiture has historically been a way that people in positions of power represent and memorialize their authority and positions within society,” said Jill Medvedow the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “A Place for Me presents an exuberant selection of paintings by an emerging generation of queer, female, and BIPOC artists and a multiplicity of perspectives on art and identity.”
“Over the last five to 10 years, there has been a remarkable reemergence of figurative painting with a new attention on who is depicted and who is being seen, and a desire through figurative painting to connect with contemporary experience,” said Erickson. “Shedding light on this, A Place for Me considers questions of identity and community and the diverse ways artists are addressing and exploring these themes through painting.”
David Antonio Cruz
David Antonio Cruz (b. 1974 in Philadelphia) is a Boston-based painter and mixed media performance artist who centers the experiences and agency of the Black, brown, and queer sitters who feature in his work. Drawn from life studies made of friends and acquaintances presented in richly varied compositions and palettes, Cruz’s paintings honor what he calls “the celebration of life, of being. Living in the moment and full of life.”
Louis Fratino
Louis Fratino (b. 1993 in Annapolis, MD) is a New York-based artist whose work fuses personal memories with art historical references to explore queerness in the gestures of everyday life. The subject matter of his paintings, sculptures, and prints ranges from nude figures to landscapes and still-lifes, through which he searches to represent visually the emotions and expressions of what he has called the “mysticism around painting, where you can manifest something through it, [whether] it’s something as simple as doing the dishes, or being in love with someone, or feeling close to your family.”
Doron Langberg
Doron Langberg (b. 1985 in Yokneam Moshava, Israel) is a New York-based painter invested in the relationship between queer lived experiences and emotional states that are universal across social categories. Touch, physicality, and movement are significant areas of focus in his vivid paintings, which include portraits of family and friends in his social circle. “I see my work as an aspirational space where queer experiences can embody more than just what they depict,” explains Langberg. “So, my paintings are both a ‘real’ reflection of my everyday experiences, and an alternate reality where queerness is allowed to be expansive and generative.”
Aubrey Levinthal
Aubrey Levinthal (b. 1986 in Philadelphia) is a Philadelphia-based painter whose work attends to the quotidian register of experience, what she calls the “uncanny in our everyday lives.” Her abstract figurative portraits are charged with an almost melancholic atmosphere, rendered in muted yet vibrant colors and a close attention to detail, evoking less a portrait of her subjects – which range from herself to those in her familial and social circles – than of their emotional states. As Levinthal explains, “I hope my work is a real, tender accounting of my particular visual life. The paintings can be inventive and distorted, as I often work from memory and through process, but I want them to carry resonance of my experience, which happens to be as a painter, woman, and mother.”
Gisela McDaniel
Gisela McDaniel (b. 1995 in Bellevue, NE) is a Detroit-based diasporic, Indigenous CHamoru artist. Her work, which engages primarily with processes of healing for womxn and non-binary people of color who have survived personal and historical trauma, is composed as mixed-media assemblages based in oil painting and found objects (often donated by her sitters) and accompanied by audio recordings she makes with her sitters during the painting process. “As survivors, we deal with the aftermath of events that remain with us for years and even lifetimes,” reflects the artist. “By recording the stories of these [womxn], I ensure that history hears their voices and recognizes them as having saved themselves.”
Arcmanoro Niles
Arcmanoro Niles (b. 1989 in Washington, D.C.) is a New York-based artist whose brightly hued paintings offer views of daily life, drawn from his own personal life and featuring characters as “seekers” who reflect subliminal urges and desires. Often incorporating reflective paints and glitter to enliven the surface of his canvases and those depicted, Niles’s intensely rendered compositions feature himself, friends, and family. “A lot of it is pretty intuitive, especially when it comes to the color, the construction of the composition, and how I want it to feel,” shares the artist. “But I think that, at the end of the day, I am a painter who is interested in color and stories that talk about who we are. Little moments that give us a glimpse into what life feels like.”
Celeste Rapone
Celeste Rapone (b. 1985 in Glen Ridge, NJ) is a Chicago-based abstract figurative painter known for illustrations of mostly women subjects—usually the artist herself—in outlandish, impossible, and even humorous compositions. Her style exceeds the traditional expectations and perspectival grounds of her canvas, drawing attention to the dynamic movement, colors, and details layered into her images meant to evoke a range of feelings from anxiety and restriction to vulnerable freedom and potential. “There’s something about the idea of the women contained, occupying these impossible positions anatomically, but also in terms of expectations, ambition, defeat and self-awareness,” shares the artist. “But even if there are sub-narratives occurring in [my] paintings, inherently they are all about trying. That notion of effort or expectation that goes into trying, which tries to counter failure. But failure is always one aspect of a larger cycle, in life and in painting.”
Ambera Wellmann
Ambera Wellmann (b. 1982 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada), a New York-based artist, explores themes of absurdity, familiarity, and uncertain intimacy in her paintings. Portraying human and, on occasion, animal bodies, commingled into numberless, genderless figures, Wellman’s paintings forgo a dominant, heteronormative Western figurative canon in favor of a distinctly feminist and queered perspective. Interested in visualizing the fluidity of gender and identity expression, Wellmann notes, “There’s this urge sometimes when you’re painting to answer things. I try to avoid that, actually. A painting should end with a question; it helps lead you to the next one.”
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.
Credit
Support for A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now is generously provided by Katie and Paul Buttenwieser, Ellen Poss, Stephen Baker and Gavin Kennedy, Patrick Planeta and Santiago Varela, and an anonymous donor.
