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Over 100 life-size figurative sculptures will fill the Watershed creating a powerful and fantastical installation.

(Boston, MA—MAR. 25, 2024) This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the next season of the Watershed with the U.S. debut of The Procession (2022), an ambitious work by sculptor and visual artist Hew Locke OBE RA. On view May 23—Sept. 2, 2024, Hew Locke: The Procession was originally commissioned by Tate Britain, UK, for its 2022 Duveen Commission. The ICA Watershed presentation is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Anni A. Pullagura, Consulting Assistant Curator, in collaboration with Tate. 

A procession is part of life; we gather and move together to celebrate, worship, protest, mourn, escape, or call for change. These expressions are all at the heart of The Procession, which features a gathering of over 100 life-size figures of all ages and abilities. Intricately handmade and adorned in printed fabric, patchwork, and appliqué, these spectacular figures embody visual references to colonialism, globalization, conflict, ecology, and cultural exchange. “They’re moving into another life,” says Hew Locke. “They may be coming from difficult times, they may be heading towards difficult times, but there’s an energy there, which is about hope.”  

Staged in the industrial setting of the Watershed at the edge of the Boston Harbor, The Procession invites visitors to join this forward-moving mass and encounter the diverse histories and experiences these sculptures embody. “With its location in East Boston overlooking the Atlantic—a point of entry, and home for generations of newcomers to this country—the ICA Watershed is a uniquely apt location for audiences to engage with The Procession,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Renowned artist Hew Locke has created a procession of figures, drawing on Caribbean and other carnival traditions. We are excited to invite our visitors to walk alongside the procession and experience the collective reasons for gathering in solidarity, migrating towards a hopeful future.” 

In The Procession, visitors will see carnival characters such as Mother Sally, Pitchy-Patchy, and Midnight Robber, dancers, refugees, horse riders, soldiers, sailors, bearers, pregnant women, drummers, and flag bearers in Locke’s cast of characters. Some carry metaphorical baggage in the form of symbolic objects, banners, or uniforms from the past and present. Others wear dresses printed with reproductions of historical paintings; Chinese, Indian, and African financial documents; and images of Locke’s own past work. Several sculptures reference contemporary concerns, such as evidence of rising sea levels, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the invasion of Ukraine. Bearing the collective weight of such histories in a timeless arrangement, the figures, in the artist’s words, “reflect on the cycles of history, and the ebb and flow of cultures, people, finance, and power.”   

“In The Procession, Locke gathers and assembles the images, materials, and concerns that have occupied his practice for decades, presenting an engaging and colorful crowd of travelers that carry both historical and cultural baggage on their journey,” said curators Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Anni A. Pullagura, Consulting Assistant Curator. “Using cardboard, jewelry, medals, and repurposed emblems of imperial power, Locke’s work engages with identity, collective histories, and contemporary experiences of the long shadow of colonialism.” 

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain, said, “I am delighted that Hew Locke’s ambitious and powerful installation is being staged at ICA Watershed. When it was unveiled at Tate Britain, it had a transformative impact on the building and on our visitors, bringing complex histories and urgent questions to the fore. It is fitting that The Procession has continued its journey to the other side of the Atlantic, where I’m sure it will continue to spark new conversations and responses.” 

Artist Biography 

Hew Locke OBE RA (born 1959 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom; lives and works in London) explores how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how these representations alter over the passage of time. These explorations have led him to a wide range of subject matters, imagery, and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks. His unique merging of influences from his native Guyana and London, where Locke now lives and works, leads to richly textured, witty, innovative and vibrant pieces that stand on a crossroad of histories, cultures and media. In 2022 Locke was awarded both Tate Britain’s Duveen Hall commission realized in The Procession, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Facade Commission realized in the work Gilt. His work is in the public collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Tate Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, and British Museum. In 2022, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) (where he completed an MA in sculpture in 1994) and was awarded an Order of the British Empire for Services to Art (OBE) in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honors list.  

About the Watershed

In 2018, the ICA opened its new ICA Watershed to the public, 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 cultural asset to experience large-scale, immersive exhibitions every summer. During the pandemic, the Watershed was used as a food distribution site to address a direct need within the East Boston community. The cross-harbor connection to the Watershed was designed to deepen the vibrant intersection of contemporary art and civic life in Boston and is central to the ICA’s vision of art, civic life, and urban vitality.  

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 on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 

About Tate

Tate is a family of galleries in the UK that includes Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. Spanning 500 years, Tate’s collection holds the national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. Tate is recognized internationally as a leading art institution and has a major international touring program which sees these artworks travel to galleries across Britain and around the globe. Tate has long been engaged with American art, artists and institutions which is frequently supported through The Tate Americas Foundation, an independent Foundation that supports the work of Tate in the United Kingdom. 

Media Contact

Theresa Romualdez, press@icaboston.org 

Exhibition Credits

Hew Locke: The Procession was originally commissioned by Tate Britain for its 2022 Tate Britain Commission. The ICA Watershed presentation is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Anni A. Pullagura, Consulting Assistant Curator, in collaboration with Tate. 

Support for Hew Locke: The Procession is provided by David Feinberg and Marina Kalb, and an anonymous donor.  

ICA Watershed programs are supported by Eastern Bank. 

The Procession was initiated and produced by Tate and curated by Elena Crippa, former Senior Curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, and Clarrie Wallis, former Senior Curator, Contemporary British Art, with Bilal Akkouche, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art; Hannah Marsh, Curatorial Assistant; and Dana Moreno, Curatorial Administrator. The tour has been managed by Lauren Buckley, Senior Project Curator, and Tucker Drew, Exhibitions Assistant, International Partnerships. 

 

Exhibition debuts works on view for the first time including a newly commissioned floor to-ceiling mural overlooking Boston Harbor.

(Boston, MA—FEB. 8, 2024) In April 2024, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Firelei Báez, the first North American museum survey dedicated to the richly layered work of Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic). The exhibition features 40 works that span nearly two decades of the artist’s practice and showcase Báez’s profoundly moving body of work exploring the complicated and often incomplete historical narratives that surround the Atlantic basin. The exhibition will premiere a new large-scale painting and site-specific mural in the ICA’s stunning Founder’s Gallery overlooking the harbor and responding to Boston’s colonial and marine history. Included in the exhibition are immersive, sculptural installations that give visitors the sensation of stepping into a world of Báez’s creation, and the largest number of her paintings gathered in one place to give audiences a full sweep of her career to date. On view from April 4 to Sept. 2, 2024 at the ICA, the exhibition will then tour throughout North America to the Vancouver Art Gallery (Nov. 2, 2024—Mar. 16, 2025) and the Des Moines Art Center (Jun. 14, 2025—Sep. 21, 2025). Firelei Báez is organized by Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs, Vancouver Art Gallery (former Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA), with Tessa Bachi Haas, ICA Curatorial Assistant. 

“Firelei Báez is part of a vital movement in contemporary art that embraces the role of art in understanding gaps in the historical record,” said Jill Medvedow, ICA Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “She delves into the historical narratives and fluid identities of the Atlantic basin in a way that invites audiences to reimagine and reassess. Firelei’s stunning, immersive installation at the ICA Watershed in 2021 left an indelible impression on all who saw it. This comprehensive survey will examine two decades of the artist’s practice, offering audiences a deeper and richer encounter with the work of this important artist.”  

“This survey highlights Báez’s investment in the medium of painting and its capacity for storytelling and mythmaking,” said Respini. “Her work is about looking at history through multiple lenses – she shifts perspectives and creates layers of complexity where history has only provided a single perspective.” 

Báez’s exuberant, colorful paintings feature complex and layered uses of pattern, decoration, and abstract gestures alongside symbols rooted in Caribbean culture. She paints overtop colonial maps or construction plans for colonial architecture to challenge our understanding of received power, history, and truth. To create her rich worlds, Báez draws on folklore, fantasy, science fiction and mythology. The mostly female figures that dominate her paintings are not easily identified – they seem to hover between human, animal, and myth. These figures can be understood as free from fixed historical categories, and as symbols of both struggle and renewal. 

In Untitled (Les tables de geographie reduites en un jeu de cartes) (2022), Báez has conjured a stampede of horses in various states of abstraction. This painting began during a 2021-22 residency in Rome, where she encountered many heraldic sculptures and paintings of horses. Unlike the images Báez encountered in Rome, her horses are not agents of battle or royal conquest, instead they are unbridled, created through the artist’s process of rendering figures through poured paint. In this work, Báez responds to the game of colonial conquest. Underneath this painting are reproductions of a set of playing cards dedicated to the Grand Dauphin of France (1661-1711), the son of King Louis XIV (1638-1715). The cards include maps of Africa, America, Europe, Asia, each represented by a playing card suit. The face cards contain a medallion portrait of a different leader for each continent, providing information on the countries represented.

This exhibition begins with significant works on paper, featuring her considerable skills as a draftsperson. An early and important example of work on paper is Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test for the Month of July (2011), a series of 31 self-portraits displayed like a calendar for the month of July. The self-portraits detail only the artist’s eyes and silhouette as she poses with different hair styles for each day of the calendar month. All of the portraits are made to match the artist’s shifting skin tone as it darkens and lightens with changing seasons. This exercise is reminiscent of the racist practice of using the Brown Paper Bag Test to admit or deny entry to social functions based on one’s skin color in the 20th-century United States.

In Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River) (2014-2015), Báez uses 225 pages sourced from late 19th-century architectural, engineering and art manuscripts sourced from The Cooper Union library, onto which she ruminates on the history of Hispaniola—the Caribbean island that is divided between the Dominican Republic and Haiti—in a global context. These form the support for her drawings depicting chimeric organisms, femme figurations, and decorative, symbolically charged embellishments. The markings intervene across the text, fusing folkloric motifs with academic writing to offer new ways of reading history and culture. Báez installs each page individually to form this wall-size installation, suggestive of island geographies and bodies of water, which viewers navigate according to their own trajectories, resisting singular narratives in favor of multiple readings. 

Báez brings the powerful quality of her paintings into three dimensions with her sculptural installations. She creates generative spaces with painted architectural forms that invite new possibilities and ideas to be explored. A Drexcyen Chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways) (2019) is an immersive installation that invites audiences to reexamine historical narratives, echoing some of the same characteristics of her 2021 commission for the ICA Watershed. Báez envelops the space under a star map of the night of the onset of the Haitian Revolution and hand-perforated blue tarps, casting spots of light onto surfaces painted with symbols reflective of the Black diaspora, constructing a place where the past, present, and future intertwine.

Báez’s architectural sculpture (once we have torn shit down, we will inevitably see more and see differently and feel a new sense of wanting and being and becoming) (2014), is adapted from the Sans-Souci Palace in Milot, Haiti, built in the early 1800s 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 militant splendor, since an 1842 earthquake the castle has been an archeological ruin. Expanding the painterly surface into an architectural dimension, visitors are welcome to walk through Báez’s archeological re-visioning. The patterning of the sculpture’s surface is largely drawn from West African indigo printing, a knowledge brought by enslaved peoples in the 17th century to the American South. American indigo was a driving force in the early national economy. This material became intrinsically woven into early American decorative and utilitarian textiles—a symbol of “true blue” Americana.

Visitors will reach the end of the exhibition in the ICA’s Founder’s Gallery with the artist’s site-specific, floor-to-ceiling mural. The vinyl mural will be visible from Boston Harbor and will engage with Boston’s colonial and marine history. 

Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue featuring works in the exhibition, works from throughout Báez’s career, and essays from Leticia Alvarado, Katherine Brinson, Jessica Bell Brown, Julie Crooks, Daniella Rose King, Eva Respini, Hallie Ringle, and Katy Siegel.

Press Preview
Media are invited to attend the press preview for Firelei Báez on Tuesday, April 2, at 10am. RSVP to press@icaboston.org

Firelei Báez is organized by Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs, Vancouver Art Gallery, (former Barbara Lee Chief Curator, ICA/Boston), with Tessa Bachi Haas, Curatorial Assistant.

Major support for Firelei Báez is provided by Hauser & Wirth, the Henry Luce Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Karen and Brian Conway, David and Jocelyne DeNunzio, Mathieu O. Gaulin, The Kotzubei-Beckmann Family Philanthropic Fund, Lise and Jeffrey Wilks, an anonymous donor, the Jennifer Epstein Fund for Women Artists, and the ICA’s Avant Guardian Society.

Exhibition includes works by Lorna Simpson, Zanele Muholi, and Jenny Holzer, as well as new acquisitions of work by, Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, Joe Wardwell, and Rivane Neuenschwander.

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Wordplay, a new collection exhibition exploring a defining aspect of contemporary art: the role of text in visual expression. Since the emergence of conceptual art in the 1960s, artists have used “text art” to probe philosophical questions, express and subvert political messages, challenge notions of identity, and connect their artwork to multiple references, writers, and cultural icons. Wordplay features 35 works—including several recent acquisitions on view for the first time—by artists such as Kenturah Davis, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Joe Wardwell, alongside signature works by Renée Green, Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, Zanele Muholi, and Lorna Simpson, among others. The exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Erika Umali, the ICA’s first Curator of Collections, and will be on view from Jan. 30 through Dec. 1, 2024. 

“Since the ICA began collecting in 2006, we have built a forward-thinking, 20th and 21st-century collection, distinguished by its representation of women artists and commitment to diversity,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Wordplay is an exciting presentation of the many ways that artists use text and language to convey ideas, promote interactivity, and create symbols, composition, color and form. 

“The term ‘Wordplay’, or a play on words, references the witty use of words and their meanings, bringing attention to language as a subject of a text,” said curators Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Erika Umali, Curator of Collections. “Likewise, the artists featured in Wordplay use text and language in creative ways that heighten our awareness of modes of communication and the acts of seeing and reading.”  

Wordplay draws primarily from the ICA’s permanent collection to showcase how contemporary artists have played with words to animate and expand their art practices. The exhibition will debut a number of recent acquisitions including:  

— Collen Mfazwe, August House, Johannesburg (2012) by South African artist and visual activist Zanele Muholi. This photograph is part of Muholi’s Faces and Phases series archiving new horizons in queer self-representation. In each photograph the sitters choose their posture, setting, and dress inviting viewers to, as Muholi says, “contemplate questions such as: What does an African lesbian look like? Is there a lesbian aesthetic or do we express our gendered, racialized and classed selves in rich and diverse ways?” In this work, a sash reading “Princess” sits across the chest of the sitter. 

— If You Got the Money Honey (2021) by Boston-based artist Joe Wardwell. This painting is Wardwell’s first cityscape, presenting a view of downtown Boston from Wardwell’s Dorchester studio. Created in response to the impending demolition of his studio and Boston’s increasingly unaffordable housing, the artist layers text ranging from lyrics from the Guns N’ Roses song that gives the work its title, to quotations sourced from cultural figures with ties to Massachusetts, including Malcolm X, Buckminster Fuller, and Donna Summer. This matrix of text and landscape evokes the collective and polyphonic voice of an urban environment.  

— Static Drift (2001) by biracial artist Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, born in Kenya to an African father and a European mother. To create this diptych, Ingrid Mwangi Hutter applied stencils to her own abdomen and allowed the sun to burn her skin, leaving parts under and overexposed on her body. One photograph shows the map of Germany outlined in darker brown with words “burn out country,” and the other shows a map of the continent of Africa in lighter brown with the words “bright dark continent.” The artist creates a literal map on her body, visualizing her experience as a biracial woman living in both Kenya and Germany—perceived as white in Africa and Black in Germany—using color, geographical shapes, and language on her own body. 

— Zé Carioca e amigos (Um festival embananado)/Joe Carioca and Friends (The Festival Went Bananas) (2005) by São Paulo-based artist Rivane Neuenschwander. This interactive installation references a famous Brazilian comic strip featuring the character José “Zé” Carioca, a dapper Brazilian parrot first created in 1941 by cartoonist José Carlos de Brito. Neuenschwander strips the comic of its original text and image, leaving only vibrant, technicolor squares and blank speech bubbles on the wall. The artist invites the public to continue the artwork by writing or drawing in the mural blocks, resulting in a collective form of spontaneous social and individual expression. 

This collection exhibition features works by 16 artists: Jennifer Bartlett, Kenturah Davis, Taylor Davis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Shepard Fairey, Renée Green, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, Guadalupe Maravilla, Zanele Muholi, Rivane Neuenschwander, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Travares Strachan, and Joe Wardwell.  

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 on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.   

Media Contact   

Theresa Romualdez, press@icaboston.org 

(Boston, MA–Nov. 14, 2023) On February 13, 2024, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) unveils a monumental, site-specific commission by multidisciplinary artist Igshaan Adams (born 1982 in Cape Town, South Africa). Adams’s woven tapestries point to the interconnectedness of the artist’s spirituality, familial histories, and local community narratives as rooted in his South African heritage. The ambitious new work, entitled Lynloop [Toeing the Line], will be on view from February 13, 2024, to February 15, 2025, in a presentation organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. 

Drawing on the notion of “desire lines”—paths created by pedestrians over time that fall outside of sanctioned walkways—Adams visualizes the everyday movements of people through a range of tactile materials to contest fixed boundaries. At the ICA, Adams will transform the first-floor lobby’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall into a multi-part, experimental weaving and sculptural installation conceived in response to the museum’s architecture and the artist’s recollections of post-apartheid South Africa. 

“Igshaan Adams brings a distinct, new voice to the ICA, combining monumentality, tactility and cosmology with a unique combination of materials and techniques, to represent histories of an apartheid and post-apartheid era in South Africa,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Visitors will encounter this stunning new work as they enter the museum’s first floor lobby, a free and open space for the public.” 

“Adams’s installation at the ICA considers the impact of childhood experiences and memories on the trajectory of one’s life,” said Erickson. “He takes maps of areas where enforced boundaries, such as those formerly used to separate communities along racial castes during the apartheid era, and reframes them with his own observations and fantasies. In this work, pathways between sports fields adjacent to where the artist grew up are softened with hues of pink, mohair, and delicate gold chain.” 

Adams uses aerial images from Google Earth as the basis for his intricate, monumental weavings. In his commission at the ICA, Lynloop, he reproduces the footpaths between a sports field and a walled-off recreational space in Heideveld, a town in Cape Town, South Africa, adjacent to Bonteheuwel, the artist’s hometown. Lynloop is an Afrikaans term formerly used by South African gangs to denote control, or to punish those who stepped out of line. Adams reimagines a “hyper-masculine” territory of his childhood and associated memories to consider both the imprint of early experiences and the potential of other futures. In dialogue with the extensive weavings are enormous suspended metallic, cloud-like sculptures that suggest concentrated areas of movement and human interaction. The artist describes his new work as “a yearning for the beauty and fantasy of what could have been if my environment had allowed for it – forcing a wish onto a memory.”  

The ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is dedicated to site-specific, commissioned works by leading contemporary artists. Located within 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 and has featured commissions by Barbara Kruger, Wangechi Mutu, Matthew Ritchie, Gillian Wearing, and Haegue Yang. 

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 on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 

Media Contact 
Theresa Romualdez, press@icaboston.org 

Credits 
Igshaan Adams, Bonteheuwel / Epping, 2021, Wood, painted wood, plastic, bone, stone and glass beads, seashells, polyester and nylon rope, cotton rope, link chain, wire (memory and galvanized steel), cotton twine, 194.88 x 460.63 x 127.95″ / 495 x 1170 x 325cm. Photo: Mario Todeschini, Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan.  

Igshaan Adams, Samesyn, 2023. Installation view 35th Bienal de São Paulo – choreographies of the impossible. Photo by Levi Fanan. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan.