Ana Mendieta, Silueta Works in Mexico, 1973–77/1991. Pigmented inkjet prints, four parts, 13 1/4 x 20 inches (33.7 x 50.8 cm); eight parts, 20 x 13 1/4 inches (50.8 x 33.7 cm). Gift of Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women. Courtesy the Galerie Lelong. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC.
As a printmaker, I think in impressions. Prints are impressions of the maker’s manipulation of a surface. Prints are memories.
I have been drawn to Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Works in Mexico, pigmented inkjet prints of photographs of the artist’s body covered in natural materials or impressed in the earth, since I first encountered them on view in First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA in 2016. I spent the first hour of every morning with the Silueta series as a Visitor Assistant and I am grateful to revisit them again in Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art After Kusama.
Ana Mendieta’s impressions of her body in the earth, themselves prints made over forty years ago, have almost certainly been erased from the land. These impressions have been preserved as photographs and then printed decades later, framed, and hung in the gallery. While looking at these familiar works, I straighten my fingers with my arms at my side, mimicking the artist’s position. I raise my arms above my head and bend my elbows, imaging the feeling of being buried by the earth or covered in flowers. I see my silhouette reflected in the glass as a contemporary echo of Mendieta’s movement.
Prints are memories linking the artist’s physical touch to the contemporary viewer, distorted and removed from their origin by the indirect process of the press—or in case of Silueta Works in Mexico the camera and the inkjet printer. As the viewer, I am simultaneously connected to Ana Mendieta but distanced by space, time, and the photographic process. The Silueta series is an impression of the artist’s body in space, a memory of her presence.
Emily Mogavero started at the ICA as a Visitor Assistant in 2016 and currently manages visitor surveys and outreach as Marketing Associate for audience development. She is also a painter/printmaker whose work explores history, portraiture, and abstraction.
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
Installation view, Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art after Kusama, the Insitute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2019. Photo by Charles Mayer. At left: McArthur Binion, Route One: Box Two: V, 2017. Oil stick, ink, and paper on board, 84 x 84 inches (213.4 x 213.4 cm). Gift of Erica Gervais and Ted Pappendick. At right: Gilbert & George, Sky Blue World, from the series 25 Worlds, 1989. Postcards mounted on board, 95 x 96 inches (241.3 x 175.3 cm). Gift of Sandra and Gerald Fineberg.
It has always been interesting to me what we choose not to see. Perhaps this impulse to look away is a form of self-preservation, a strategy of survival when the reality of trying to keep going in our current political climate feels so bleak. As an able-bodied immigrant, a person of color, and a woman, I am sure I share this impulse with many others. And perhaps McArthur Binion, even as he rejects the imposition on Black artists to create art only about Black life, is thinking about this impulse, too. Through a compelling yet minimal use of line, form, and media, perhaps what Binion is really asking us to do is to see differently, to look harder at what we don’t want to see, and to accept that what we want to turn away from is still present, affecting our sightlines even when we try to hide from them.
What I learn from looking at Binion’s work is how to slow down looking itself. The tender details in his paintings and drawings reward our attentions, even as works like Route One: Box Two: V (2017), on view in Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art after Kusama, still appear to hold something back from us. For a moment, I get the impression that something important remains beneath these repeated images of Binion’s Mississippi childhood home, just out of eyesight and boxed into tiny rows and columns beneath dense hand-applied oil stick paint.
I remember feeling this way the last time I was in Mississippi, driving down U.S. Route 49 between Sumner and Money, two towns at the heart of the story of Emmett Till’s lynching in 1955. Highway 49 is one of the most important roads in Mississippi. It’s a crucial site in Southern folklore and music; it’s a government-mandated evacuation route for climate emergencies; and it remains the only major artery between Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and the state capital. And it’s the last road that Emmett ever saw.
It’s hard not to think about what he saw traveling down that highway in August 1955. It’s even more astonishing to realize how little Route 49 has changed since then, too. Apart from a few areas of development, it’s quite literally the same road; very little has been paved over or rerouted. In general, the same few families own the same few parcels of land, and while new crops like soybeans have been introduced, it’s still cotton framing the views from the road, however much we want to look elsewhere instead.
In Route One: Box Two: V, Binion’s gridlines leaves us with small, slight gaps to catch our breath, to take a step back before returning close to the work once more. Without conflating this history with theme or subject matter, or requiring that we need to hold these ideas always in tense or tight relation to each other, Binion makes it clear that to hold ourselves back from looking closely is as much a misapprehension as to force ourselves to see only one way.
— Anni Pullagura joined the ICA as a Curatorial Assistant in 2020. She is completing a PhD in American Studies from Brown University.
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
(Boston, MA—February 6, 2019) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) announced today the appointment of Anni Pullagura as Curatorial Assistant and Juan Omar Rodriguez as Curatorial Fellow. Anni will work on an array of upcoming exhibitions and publications, including the forthcoming survey exhibition of Deana Lawson and its accompanying publication. She will also serve a key role in the management of the ICA’s permanent collection. Juan Omar is working closely with ICA curators on the upcoming exhibition Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” in addition to supporting the curators in long-range research projects. Curatorial Fellowships are made possible, in part, through the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, funded by the Walton Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Anni Pullagura
Since coming to the ICA in 2018 as a Curatorial Fellow, Anni Pullagura has supported catalogue production and exhibition planning for When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art (2019-20), William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects (2018-19), and Huma Bhabha: They Live (2019). An alumna of the Center for Curatorial Leadership/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice, she has held numerous positions in cultural institutions throughout the United States, including the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the High Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in American Studies and an MA candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University, where she also received her MA in Public Humanities in 2016. As a 2019–20 Tyson Scholar of American Art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, her dissertation “Seeing Feeling: The Work of Empathy in Exhibitionary Spaces” traces a critical history of contemporary Black and Indigenous installation art since 1989.
Juan Omar Rodriguez
Juan Omar Rodriguez received his MA in Art History and Museum Studies from Tufts University and his BA in Neuroscience from Oberlin College. He recently co-curated the exhibition SMFA at Tufts: Juried Student Exhibition 2019–2020 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has previously conducted research and designed public programs for Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular (2019) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and A Decolonial Atlas: Strategies in Contemporary Art of the Americas (2018) at the Tufts University Art Galleries.
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 augmenting art’s role as educator, incubator, and convener for social engagement. Its innovative exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. Spanning two locations across Boston Harbor, the ICA offers year-round programming at its iconic building in Boston’s Seaport and seasonal programming (May-September) at the Watershed in an East Boston shipyard.
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.
Acknowledgments
Curatorial Fellowships are made possible, in part, through the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, funded by the Walton Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Images
Anni Pullagura: Molly O’Donnell
Juan Omar Rodriguez: Liza Voll Photography
Courtesy of the artist. © Merill Comeau
Visitors are invited to collaborate in the making of a large-scale tapestry designed in collaboration with local fiber artist Merill Comeau
(Boston, MA—February 4, 2020) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) has invited local fiber artist Merill Comeau to create an interactive installation and project in the museum’s Bank of America Art Lab with the debut of Threads of Connection, opening February 15. Comeau creates artwork that combines and layers hundreds of hand painted and printed repurposed textiles. Through this labor of love, Comeau stitches together stories of cultures, individuals, and relationships into dynamic and sprawling fiber works.
Threads of Connection is a wall-sized tapestry installation that recognizes the building of community found within the age-old practice of gathering to assemble fabric pieces in quilting bees. This interactive project celebrates and reflects on the many different backgrounds and experiences of the people visiting the Bank of America Art Lab, as visitors of all ages are invited to collaborate in the making of the tapestry and share their stories in the museum’s own quilting bee. Contributions from visitors will be added to the tapestry regularly, creating a constantly growing reflection of the community.
Threads of Connection will be open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12–4 PM, from February 15 through June 21. The activity is free for all visitors with museum admission.
February School Vacation Week
Come visit us during school vacation week! Explore the galleries and create art together in the Bank of America Art Lab with art-making activities for visitors of all ages. Threads of Connection will be open 11 AM–4 PM during on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of February school vacation week. Admission on Presidents’ Day (Monday, February 17) will be free for all. Visit icaboston.org for more details and schedules as program dates approach.
Meet the artist on February 20, February 29, and April 23
Visitors are invited to meet Merill Comeau and learn about her creative process. More information at icaboston.org.
ICA Play Date: Crafting Community
Sat, Feb 29, 10 AM–4 PM
Kids rule the ICA the last Saturday of every month, when the museum fills up with fun, creative, and even zany activities for kids and adults to do together. Join Merill Comeau in the Bank of America Art Lab for a printmaking workshop and contribute to the growing community tapestry. We are excited to partner with Boston-based Wee the People, a social justice project for kids, as they explore themes from current exhibitions through storytelling and making. For ICA Play Dates, admission is free for up to 2 adults per family when accompanied by children ages 12 and under. Youth 17 and under are always admitted free to the ICA.
Also on view
Threads of Connection will be open during the ICA’s forthcoming exhibition Sterling Ruby, opening February 26. The exhibition is the first comprehensive museum survey for American/Dutch artist Sterling Ruby. The exhibition features more than 70 works that demonstrate the relationship between material transformation in Ruby’s practice and the rapid evolution of contemporary culture, institutions, and labor. Spanning more than two decades of the artist’s career, the exhibition features an array of works created in various mediums, from his renowned ceramics and paintings to lesser-known drawings and sculptures. Since his earliest works, Ruby has investigated the role of the artist as an outsider. Critiquing the structures of modernism and traditional institutions, Ruby addresses the repressed underpinnings of U.S. culture and the coding of power and violence, employing a range of imagery from the American flag to prison architecture and graffiti. Craft is central to his inquiry, informed by his upbringing in Pennsylvania Dutch country and working in Los Angeles, as he explores hand-based processes from Amish quilt-making to California’s radical ceramics tradition.
About the artist
Merill Comeau is a Boston-area mixed media artist specializing in textiles. She has participated in over 80 exhibitions including at the Fuller Craft Museum, Danforth Art Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, Museums of Old York, MA and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute of Boston. Her installation Family of Origin is currently touring with FiberArt International 2019 and will travel to the Fort Collins Art Museum in Colorado in 2020. Comeau has completed ten artist residencies including three month-long stays at Weir Farm National Historic Site in CT where she researched Weir family women’s lives to use as art-making inspiration. She has been a guest artist in residence and exhibited at Southern New Hampshire University, Simmons College, Lasell University, Stonehill College, Dana Hall School and Phillips Exeter Academy. Comeau’s work has been showcased in numerous publications including Surface Design Journal, TextileArtist.org, Fiber Art Now, Textile Study Group of New York’s blog, Mass Cultural Council’s ArtsSake blog, and World of Threads Artist Interviews. In addition to her solo studio practice, Comeau facilitates the emergence of artistic voices. Since 2012, she has been a teaching artist for the Department of Youth Services making art with youth residing in secure treatment centers while serving sentences in the Massachusetts court system. In her trauma informed practice she uses visual expression as storytelling, transmitting knowledge, and defining values. She has executed over 30 public projects resulting in individual and collaborative artworks. In 2019 she taught at Eliot School of Applied Arts and Craft in Boston and the Surface Design Association’s biennial conference in St. Louis, MO. In addition to teaching, Comeau provides lectures on her work, fiber arts in a postmodern context, and visual voices of social justice.
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 augmenting art’s role as educator, incubator, and convener for social engagement. Its innovative exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. Spanning two locations across Boston Harbor, the ICA offers year-round programming at its iconic building in Boston’s Seaport and seasonal programming (May-September) at the Watershed in an East Boston shipyard.
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.
Play Dates are sponsored by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, and Alexion.
Major support for Sterling Ruby is provided by Sprüth Magers, Gagosian, and Xavier Hufkens.
Additional support for the Boston presentation is generously provided by Stephanie Formica Connaughton and John Connaughton, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, David and Leslie Puth, and Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III.