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The artist’s first Boston exhibition will feature a gallery-sized installation created from suspended and layered unstretched canvases

(Boston, MA—July 19, 2019) On August 21, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the first Boston presentation of Argentine-Swiss artist Vivian Suter (b. 1949, Buenos Aires, Argentina), who has been living and working Guatemala since the 1980s. Comprised of dozens of individual mixed-media paintings, this exhibition will feature a single installation by Suter in which unstretched canvases flood the gallery, creating a canopy of color and shape evocative of the natural environment surrounding her home and studio in Panajachel, Guatemala. On view from August 21 through December 31, 2019, Vivian Suter is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.

“Vivian Suter’s approach to installing her paintings is incredibly unique,” says Erickson. “She layers, suspends, and rotates her canvases, inviting visitors to meander through her work and its sumptuous gestures and colors.”

Suter works in close partnership with the natural environment surrounding her home of thirty years by Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Her method often involves moving her canvases between the indoors and outdoors and exposing them to the climate in order to allow nature to comingle with her broad swaths of painted, vivid color. The mud and rain, insects that crawl across the soil, and avocados and mangos that drop from trees work in concert with Suter’s gestural compositions, which are inspired by the surrounding vegetation and landscape. To exhibit her work, she creates installations by layering and suspending unstretched canvases in space, referencing the organic modes of hanging and draping her canvases in the studio.

About the artist

Vivian Suter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, studied in Basel, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Panajachel, Guatemala. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at numerous international institutions including Gladstone Gallery, New York (2019), The Power Plant, Toronto (2018), Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (2018), Jewish Museum, New York (2017), Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2014), and Kunstmuseum Olten, Switzerland (2004), and also included in documenta 14 (2017).

Curator Tour: Ruth Erickson on Vivian Suter

Thu, Sep 5, 6 PM
Delve into Vivian Suter’s vivid canvases with Mannion Family Curator Ruth Erickson to learn more about the artist’s creative method. Based in Guatemala, Suter engages in intense dialogue with the natural environment surrounding her home and studio.

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.       

Acknowledgement
Support for Vivian Suter is generously provided by Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté and Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld.

Featuring Rashin Fahandej, Josephine Halvorson, Lavaughan Jenkins, and Helga Roht Poznanski, whose artwork and biographies reflect the diverse practices of artists living and working in Boston

(Boston, MA—July 18, 2019) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents the 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition with major works on view from Boston-area artists Rashin Fahandej, Josephine Halvorson, Lavaughan Jenkins, and Helga Roht Poznanski. This intergenerational group of artists works across media, including painting, sculpture, and video, to explore questions of place, portraiture, and belonging. On view from August 21 to December 31, 2019, the exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.

“We are ever grateful to Jim and Audrey Foster for their inspired support of the ICA. The James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition highlights the strength, dynamism, and depth of Boston’s arts community. We are eager to share with the public a broad range of talent in this important biennial showcase,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. 

“The 2019 Foster Prize artists exemplify the dynamic breadth of work being created in Boston’s artistic community,” said James Foster, ICA Trustee, and Audrey Foster, ICA Advisory Board Member. 

The James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the ICA’s efforts to nurture and recognize exceptional Boston-area artists. First established in 1999, the Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its new facility in 2006. James and Audrey Foster, passionate collectors and supporters of contemporary art, endowed the prize, ensuring the ICA’s ability to sustain and grow the program for years to come.

Each iteration of the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition highlights a new area of focus within Boston’s rich ecology of contemporary art practices. To select the 2019 Foster Prize artists, Erickson conducted studio visits with 50 artists living and working in the Boston-area over the past year. Relying upon ongoing recommendations from curators, artists, and other colleagues, she previewed more than 150 artists’ work online, and set up studio visits with 50 of these artists. Intent to view a broad cross-section of artists, Erickson assured she met with practitioners working in all media and with varied backgrounds and training.

“This exhibition presents a sliver of the countless talented artists who have trained at and teach in Boston’s numerous art schools,” said Erickson. “I am humbled by the generosity of these artists and grateful to Jim and Audrey Foster for the opportunity to share their work with ICA audiences.”

The exhibition begins with a selection of tightly-composed, abstract watercolors by Helga Roht Poznanski that reflect her training in fashion and fine art, as well as her own life experience fleeing her native Estonia and immigrating to Vienna, and then to Canada and the United States. Poznanski begins these works first as collages, tearing colored and patterned paper from fashion magazines. These collages serve as studies for her final watercolors, which she paints using a dry watercolor technique to achieve bold colors and crisp lines. Her paintings possess a complex pictorial space, with nested and overlapping forms, windows and portals, moons and suns, evoking fractured views of a cityscape.

The next gallery presents forty three-dimensional, figurative “paintings” by Lavaughan Jenkins on individual shelves lining the walls. Building the human figure through the layering of oil paint over an armature of wire, molding paste, and Styrofoam, Jenkins describes his tabletop sculptures as “paintings,” and he is centrally invested in the effects of form, color, and light. The sculptures include figures vaguely resembling the artist—with black skin and a full girth—to regal figures in full skirts that Jenkins refers to as “duchesses.” Some figures are sitting or kneeling, others are standing; many lack arms or other features that fully define the human form; and often they appear to interact in small groupings. Such modifications lend the sculptures an incredible range of emotions, especially as each one seems to express particular emotional or psychological states in relationship to power. The kneeling and armless figures that read as men especially evoke a sense of humility, shame, or even emasculation. Jenkins derives his color palettes from his study of high fashion, especially the collections of designers like Valentino. His unique hand combines a roughness of form and paint application with the delicacy of oil built up.   

An immersive and interactive installation of Rashin Fahandej’s multipart and ongoing project A Father’s Lullaby fills the next gallery. Initiated in response to the absence of fathers in communities of color as a direct result of mass incarceration, this project harnesses song, storytelling, and video to convey the love and loss as a result of incarcerated fathers. A multi-channel video and sound piece presents the images and sounds of community members and formerly incarcerated men who hum lullabies they remember from their childhood or sang to their own children. Interactive touch panels activate the playing of individual stories, and mirrors throughout the space reflect the projected images and the bodies of visitors, merging these two and considering the shared space of their interaction and empathy.

The final gallery is the exhibition is dedicated to the work of Josephine Halvorson, whose painting practice focuses on place and the careful acts of observation and transcription. Working in gouache on paper mounted to canvas, Halvorson selects a particular place, sets up her tools and materials, and takes in her surroundings, easel, and looks at the ground, translating what she sees into painted marks. The resulting paintings capture the heterogeneity and brilliance of the mundane, revealing each square inch to hold countless marks, colors, and shapes. This exhibition presents recent gouache paintings made at two different locations: five paintings made at an abandoned mine in Death Valley, California, and two large panoramic works made in Western Massachusetts. In these works, Halvorson has further experimented with making a visceral connection to site through not only representation and observation but also material. Collecting stones, soil, and debris from the sites where she paints, she grinds these materials and mixes them with pigment to create subtly distinct “frames” for her gouache paintings.

The Artist’s Voice

Thu, Sep 26, 7 PM

Rashin Fahandej, Josephine Halvorson, Lavaughan Jenkins, and Helga Roht Poznanski will discuss their processes, and works, and participation in the Foster Prize exhibition in a public talk moderated by Mannion Family Curator Ruth Erickson.

About the artists

Rashin Fahandej (b. 1978, Shiraz, Iran) is an Iranian-American artist and independent filmmaker. Her work centers on marginalized voices, and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating social change. A proponent of “Art as Ecosystem,” she defines her project as a “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual space. She is the founder of A Father’s Lullaby, a multi-platform, co-creative project that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Marginalia, a series of poetic documentaries about Baha’i immigrants of Iranian descent, narrates a historical persecution in their homeland. Fahandej holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2006) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2010). She has served as an artistic director of the Rebuilding the Gwozdziec Synagogue at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and 2017 Boston Artist-In-Residence with Mayor’s office of art and culture. Fahandej currently is a research fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab, a Public Art Resident at Boston Center for the Arts, and a visiting faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Fahandej maintains a studio at Boston Center for the Arts and lives in Framingham, MA.

Josephine Halvorson (b. 1981, Brewster, MA) makes art from observation in relation to a particular object and place. Transcribing her perceptions in real time, Halvorson connects with the world around her through the medium of paint. Her work describes the appearance of the thing at-hand, while also expressing that which is invisible yet nonetheless felt: locale, time, history, and emotion. Halvorson’s artistic practice foregrounds attention and experience, taking the form of painting and also sculpture, printmaking and drawing. Halvorson holds a BFA from The Cooper Union (2003) and an MFA from Columbia University (2007). She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Austria (2003-4), a Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris (2007-8), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2009), and was the first American pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome (2014-15). Her work has been exhibited internationally and is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Peter Freeman, Inc., Paris. Solo exhibitions include the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC and Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY. Halvorson is Professor of Art and Chair of Graduate Studies in Painting at Boston University, and she lives in Boston and western Massachusetts.

Lavaughan Jenkins (b. 1976, Boston) is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor who uses the materiality of paint to build up two- and three-dimensional works that merge figuration with abstraction. He continuously reworks his surfaces, adding and scraping paint until his figures—from rotund men to courtly female characters—emerge and at times spill over the edges. Jenkins has recently exhibited his work at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, and the Fitchburg Art Museum. In 2016-17 he became the Emerging Artist at Kingston Gallery in Boston. He holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2005) and has exhibited his work at such venues as Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Gallery Kayafas, Lens Gallery, and the Arts Research Collaborative Gallery, all in Boston, MA, as well as at the Oasis Gallery in Beijing. Jenkins is a recipient of the 2015 Blanche E. Colman Award and the Rob Moore Grant in Painting. Jenkins was raised in Pensacola, Florida, and currently lives and works in Roxbury, MA.

Helga Roht Poznanski (b. 1927, Tartu, Estonia) is a watercolorist, painter, and fashion designer, whose diverse artistic output expresses a strong sense of color, composition, and spatial architectonics. Born in Estonia, Poznanski fled her homeland in 1944 for fear of Soviet repression, moving with her mother from Vienna to Innsbruck, Austria, and ultimately emigrating to Montreal, Canada in 1948. She graduated from the Montreal Fashion Arts Academy, working for 18 years as a designer at fashion houses in Montreal and New York, studied painting at the New York Art Students’ League from 1964-66, and then continued her study of visual arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1974-78. During the interceding decades, she has painted hyperrealistic architectural scenes and botanical specimens, but her longest running series has been abstract and colorful collage-like compositions in watercolor, characterized by a well-structured pictorial space and rhythmic geometrical surfaces that Poznanski has equated to views from windows. Part of a generation of exiled Estonian artists, Poznanski has exhibited her artwork at galleries in Canada and New England and received her most significant exhibitions at museums in Estonia. She lives and works in Jamaica Plain, MA.

About the ICA

An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for 80 years. Like its iconic building on Boston’s waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and 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. The ICA, located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 AM–5 PM; Thursday and Friday, 10 AM–9 PM (1st Friday of every month, 10 AM–5 PM); and Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM–5 PM.  Admission is $15 adults, $13 seniors and $10 students, and free for members and children 17 and under. Free admission for families at ICA Play Dates (2 adults + children 12 and under) on last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at www.icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Acknowledgement

The exhibition and prize are generously endowed by James and Audrey Foster.

(Boston, MA—July 16, 2019) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents a robust schedule of dynamic performances as part of the upcoming season. Highlights include a restaging of acclaimed choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s very first performance; THE DAY, a new music/dance collaboration among legends Maya Beiser, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, and David Lang; and a raw and visceral live performance album by nora chipaumire, “a kind of rock star of dance” (The New Yorker).

All events take place in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling 617-478-3103.

See icaboston.org for extended descriptions, artist bios, trailers, and production and accessibility info.

Dance

Thu Sep 19–Sat, Sep 21, 8 PM
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas
Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich
$25 ICA members + students / $35 general admission

Premiered in 1982, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s very first performance comprises three duets and one solo, choreographed to four compositions by the American minimalist composer Steve Reich. De Keersmaeker uses the structure of Reich’s music to develop an independent movement idiom that doesn’t merely illustrate the music but adds a new dimension to it. Both the music and the dance start from the principle of “phase shifting” through tiny variations: movements that start out perfectly synchronous gradually slip and move out of sync, resulting in an ingenious play of continuously changing forms and patterns. Having always danced Fase herself, De Keersmaeker will pass the work to two new dancers at the ICA, for the first time in the work’s history.

Fri, Oct 18 + Sat, Oct 19, 8 PM
nora chipaumire
#PUNK 100% POP *N!GGA
$15 ICA members + students / $25 general admission  
Friday: #PUNK and 100% POP
Saturday: 100% POP and *N!GGA

Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe and based in New York City, choreographer nora chipaumire challenges and embraces stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art and aesthetics. Inspired by her formative years in Zimbabwe, #PUNK 100% POP *N!GGA is a raw and visceral live performance album that confronts and celebrates three sonic ideologies: punk, pop, and rumba, through the radical visions of musicians Patti Smith, Grace Jones, and Rit Nzele. chipaumire and her company of dancers and musicians raucously question how status and power are experienced and presented through the body. Featuring a stage set designed by visual artists Ari Marcopoulos and Kara Walker, the work is a continuation of chipaumire’s career-long investigation of portraiture and self-portraiture, biography, subjecthood, liberation, and independence as a black female and African. Note: The audience remains standing for much of the performance.

Thu, Nov 21–Sat, Nov 23, 8 PM
Sun, Nov 24, 2 PM
Faye Driscoll
Thank You For Coming: Space
$20 ICA members + students / $30 general admission  

One of the most fascinating and astonishing choreographers working today, Faye Driscoll returns to the ICA with the final installment of her Thank You For Coming trilogy. Alone with the audience, Driscoll performs a moving elegy about loss, the substance of mourning, and the labor of grief. In Space, Driscoll and her collaborators construct a temporary world held up by pulleys, ropes, and the weight of others. At its center is the body—built for action, self-contained, and driven by a longing to be in the world. “A visual embodiment of grief and loss combined with a fierce proclamation of the ecstasy of living” (Montclair Local).

Fri, Jan 17 + Sat, Jan 18, 8 PM
Kate Wallich + The YC x Perfume Genius
The Sun Still Burns Here
$20 ICA members + students / $30 general admission  

The Sun Still Burns Here is an evening-length dance and music work created by Seattle-based choreographer Kate Wallich and her company The YC and musician/composer Mike Hadreas of the band Perfume Genius. Combining Hadreas’s musical textures and landscapes, Wallich’s choreographic narratives, and Amiya Brown’s production design, The Sun Still Burns Here unravels themes of deterioration, catharsis, and transcendence from the body. Wallich and Hadreas unite a team of musicians, dancers, and designers to create a stunning and emotionally complex performance that radically integrates indie rock with contemporary dance.

Fri, Feb 21 + Sat, Feb 22, 8 PM
Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group
POWER
$15 ICA members + students / $25 general admission  

For over 30 years, Reggie Wilson and his Fist and Heel Performance Group have explored the spiritual and mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora through contemporary dance. Expanding on his previous research of African American spiritual worship and movement, Wilson’s newest work, POWER, considers how the Black Shaker community might have lived and worshipped. POWER takes Inspiration from notable Shaker women leaders like Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker community, and Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson, founder of the first African-American urban Shaker family group in Philadelphia. Featuring a thrilling cast of performers, POWER examines and enlivens Shaker values, contributions, practices, and history through a postmodern American lens.

Fri, Apr 24 + Sat, Apr 25, 8 PM
Sun, Apr 26, 2 PM
Maya Beiser + Wendy Whelan + Lucinda Childs + David Lang
THE DAY
$30 ICA members + students / $40 general admission  

THE DAY is a new music/dance work by cellist Maya Beiser, dancer Wendy Whelan, choreographer Lucinda Childs, with music by David Lang. A collaboration among legends, THE DAY is an evening-long sensory exploration of two journeys—life and the eternal, post-mortal voyage of the soul. This bold, highly collaborative work explores universal themes through the shared language of music and dance. Renowned avant-garde cellist Maya Beiser, who conceived the piece, has been described by the Boston Globe as “a force of nature” and by Rolling Stone as a “cello rock star.” Wendy Whelan, widely considered one of the world’s leading dancers, spent 30 years as a principal dancer with New York City Ballet and originated numerous roles in new works by the world’s most esteemed choreographers. The two will be onstage all evening, embodying the iconic choreography of Lucinda Childs (a Commandeur in France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and 2018 inductee in Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Dance) to the original music of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang.

Music

Thu, Mar 26, 8 PM
Roger C. Miller and Ludovico Ensemble
Electric Guitars, String Quartet, Dreams and Records
$10 ICA members + students / $15 general admission  

Rock musician Roger Miller, a founding member of the band Mission of Burma and a longtime member of the Alloy Orchestra, showcases a different musical perspective, blending elements of classical and rock music, in a unique concert event. Performing original compositions influenced by everyday phenomena, as well as surrealism, Miller conjures a one-person orchestra with his electric guitar using loops, devices and electronics. The second part of the evening features Miller’s music for String Quartet performed by Boston’s own Ludovico Ensemble that culminates in “Music for String Quartet and Two Turn-tables,” with Miller joining in on the turn-tables.

Fall Exhibitions

2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize
Aug 21–Dec 31, 2019

The 2019 installment of the ICA’s biannual James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition highlighting the work of Boston-area artists will feature four individuals: Rashin Fahandej (b. 1978, Shiraz, Iran), Josephine Halvorson (b. 1981, Brewster, MA), Lavaughan Jenkins (b. 1976, Boston, MA), and Helga Roht Poznanski (b. 1926, Tartu, Estonia). This intergenerational group of artists works across media, including painting, sculpture, film, and video, to explore questions of place, portraiture, and belonging. Their unique and exceptional work demonstrates the breadth and ecology of contemporary art practices in Boston. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) is central to the ICA’s efforts to nurture and recognize local artists, showcase exceptional artwork, and support a thriving local arts scene. This exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.

Vivian Suter
Aug–Dec 31, 2019

Vivian Suter (b. 1949, Buenos Aires, Argentina) works in close partnership with the natural environment surrounding her home and studio in Panajachel, Guatemala. The artist’s first Boston exhibition will feature a single installation filling the galleries with a canopy of color and shapes evocative of the lush setting. Her method often involves moving her canvases between the indoors and outdoors and exposing them to the climate in order to allow nature to comingle with her broad swaths of painted, vivid color. The mud and rain, light through the trees, and animals in the forest work in concert with Suter’s gestural compositions, which are inspired by the surrounding vegetation and landscape. Her installation of layered and suspended canvases invites visitors to discover her unique dialogue with the imagined and natural worlds. This exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.

Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING
Sep 24, 2019–Feb 7, 2021

An icon of contemporary art, Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) has interwoven ideas of pop art, minimalism, and psychedelia throughout her work in paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, design, and architectural interventions over her long and influential career. LOVE IS CALLING, which premiered in Japan in 2013, is the most immersive and kaleidoscopic of the artist’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. Representing the culmination of her artistic achievements, it exemplifies the breadth of her visual vocabulary—from her signature polka dots and soft sculptures to brilliant colors, the spoken word, and most importantly, endless reflections and the illusion of space. It is composed of a darkened, mirrored room illuminated by inflatable, tentacle-like forms—covered in the artist’s characteristic polka dots—that extend from the floor and ceiling, gradually changing colors. As visitors walk throughout the installation, a sound recording of Kusama reciting a love poem in Japanese plays continuously. Written by the artist, the poem’s title translates to “Residing in a Castle of Shed Tears” in English. Exploring enduring themes including life and death, the poem poignantly expresses Kusama’s hope to spread a universal message of love through her art. LOVE IS CALLING is the largest of Kusama’s existing Infinity Mirror Rooms, and the first one held in the permanent collection of a New England museum. Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.

Parallel to LOVE IS CALLING, the ICA will present a focused collection presentation titled Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art After Kusama, to provide visitors with a deeper understanding of how Kusama has indelibly influenced art today. The 14th iteration of the ICA’s annual collection exhibition, Beyond Infinity will feature approximately 15 works from the 1950s to today, encompassing sculpture, painting, film, photography, and drawings.

When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art
Oct 23, 2019–Jan 26, 2020

When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art considers how contemporary artists are responding to the migration, immigration, and displacement of peoples today. We are currently witnessing the highest levels of movement on record—the United Nations estimates that one out of every seven people in the world is an international or internal migrant who moves by choice or by force, with great success or great struggle. When Home Won’t Let You Stay borrows its title from a poem by Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet who gives voice to the experiences of refugees. Through artworks made since 2000 by twenty artists from more than a dozen countries — such as Colombia, Cuba, France, India, Iraq, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States — this exhibition highlights diverse artistic responses to migration ranging from personal accounts to poetic meditations, and features a range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, painting, and video. Artists in the exhibition include Kader Attia, Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Hayv Kahraman, Reena Saini Kallat, Richard Mosse, Carlos Motta, Yinka Shonibare, Xaviera Simmons, and Do-Ho Suh, among others. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with an essay by Eva Respini and Ruth Erickson and texts by prominent scholars Aruna D’Souza, Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Keenan, Peggy Levitt, and Uday Singh Mehta, among others. This exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, and Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Ellen Tani, Assistant Curator.

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.

 

 

Acknowledgments

First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the 2019–20 Performance Season ICA Live.

Additional support is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough and Robert Davoli and Eileen McDonagh.

nora chipaumire: #PUNK 100% POP *N!GGA is funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies.

The presentation of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group: POWER was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group: POWER is supported, in part, by the David Henry Fund for Performance.

The presentation of Maya Beiser, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs + David Lang, THE DAY was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

THE DAY is a Summer Stages Dance @ the ICA/Boston project and is made possible, in part, with the support of Jane Karol and Howard Cooper, David Parker, The Aliad Fund, and Stephanie and Leander McCormick-Goodhart.

The 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition and prize are generously endowed by James and Audrey Foster.

Support for Vivian Suter is generously provided by Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté and Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld.

LOVE IS CALLING was acquired through the generosity of Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Hilary and Geoffrey Grove, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, Barbara H. Lloyd, and an anonymous donor.

Support for When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art is generously provided by Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld, Kristen and Kent Lucken, the Poss Family Foundation, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.