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The artist’s first Boston presentation features widely acclaimed video installation

This June, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016), a masterful video installation by artist, filmmaker, and award-winning cinematographer Arthur Jafa. The seven-minute, single-channel video presents glimpses of the joys and traumas of black life in the United States, which the artist sees as nuanced, beautiful, and multifaceted. Set to Kanye West’s stirring, gospel-inspired hip-hop track, “Ultralight Beam” (2016), Love is the Message traces African American identity and representation through a vast spectrum of imagery, including found footage of civil rights leaders, news reports of riots, scenes of athletic prowess, and musical performances. The installation also includes snippets of Jafa’s acclaimed 2014 documentary Dreams are Colder than Death, which lyrically reflects on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and contemporary black experiences. “This groundbreaking work is an ode to the triumphs, tragedies, and resilience of black life in the United States,” says ICA assistant curator Jessica Hong. “As an artist, Jafa asserts the importance of black culture, and in particular music, which for him is a critical mode of social, even political, expression.” Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death is organized by Jessica Hong, Assistant Curator, and is on view from June 27 through September 30, 2018.

About the Artist
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C. His work has recently been exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2017-18); Serpentine Gallery, London (2017); The Met Breuer, New York (2017); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017). Jafa was the cinematographer on Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (1994) and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), as well as director of photography on Solange Knowles’s music videos Don’t Touch My Hair (2016) and Cranes in the Sky (2016). He directed APEX (2013), Deshotten 1.0 with Malik Sayeed (2009), Tree (1999), Slowly This (1995), and co-founded TNEG (motion picture studio). In 2015, he received the Best Documentary award at the Black Star Film Festival for Dreams are Colder than Death (2014). His writing has appeared in publications such as Black Popular Culture and Everything but the Burden.

Also on View
On view concurrently is the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985, which focuses on the work of more than 40 artists and activists and examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color—distinct from the primarily white, middle-class mainstream feminist movement—in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period. We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and coordinated at the ICA by Jessica Hong, Assistant Curator.

Opening Reception
Thursday, June 28, 2018 | 6:00 PM
Media are invited to take a first look at Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985. At 6:00 PM, there will be a public talk with ICA assistant curator Jessica Hong and curators Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley, organizers of We Wanted a Revolution at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by a special opening reception that will be open to the public. RSVP to Margaux Leonard, mleonard@icaboston.org.

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.

Landmark exhibition shines spotlight on the work of black women artists, and examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism.

On June 27, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985. Focusing on the work of over 40 artists and activists, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. It is the first exhibition to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color—distinct from the primarily white, middle-class mainstream feminist movement—in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period. On view through September 30, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 is organized by the Brooklyn Museum. The ICA’s presentation is coordinated by Jessica Hong, Assistant Curator.

“We Wanted a Revolution illuminates a fervent—and too little known—period of art making and social activism by an extraordinary group of women artists,” says Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “The exhibition makes visible the wide diversity of media, styles, materials, and genres reflective of the political, cultural, and social concerns of the day.”

“We are thrilled to bring We Wanted a Revolution to Boston,” says Hong. “Our audiences will gain so much from this robust exhibition, which like the ICA’s Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, underscores the museum’s commitment to bring under-recognized artistic voices to the fore.”

The exhibition features a wide array of work, including conceptual, performance, film, and video art, as well as photography, painting, sculpture, and printmaking by a diverse group of artists and activists who lived and worked at the intersections of avant-garde art worlds and radical political movements.

Organized in a general chronology around a key group of movements, collectives, actions, and communities, the exhibition builds a narrative based on significant events in the lives of the artists including:

  • Concepts such as Black Feminism
  • Spiral and the Black Arts Movement
  • Collectives such as “Where We At” Black Women Artists, Heresies, Combahee River Collective
  • Art world activism, including the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC), the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), Women, Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL), and the Judson Three
  • Just Above Midtown Gallery in New York
  • Groundbreaking exhibitions, such as New York’s A.I.R. Gallery exhibition Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States
  • A section focused on the cultural production and activities in the 1980s

Artists in the exhibition include Emma Amos, Camille Billops, Kay Brown, Linda Goode Bryant, Beverly Buchanan, Carole Byard, Elizabeth Catlett, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ayoka Chenzira, Christine Choy and Susan Robeson, Blondell Cummings, Julie Dash, Pat Davis, Jeff Donaldson, Maren Hassinger, Janet Henry, Virginia Jaramillo, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Lisa Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Carolyn Lawrence, Samella Lewis, Dindga McCannon, Barbara McCullough, Ana Mendieta, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Alva Rogers, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Coreen Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Ming Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Also on View
On view concurrently is the exhibition Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death, a seven-minute single-channel video installation by artist, filmmaker, and award-winning cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Called a “crucial ode to black America” by The New Yorker, the masterful installation comprises original and found footage from concerts, marches, music videos, news reports, police cameras, YouTube videos, as well as scenes from Jafa’s well-known 2014 documentary Dreams are Colder than Death, which lyrically reflects on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and contemporary black experiences. The swelling, stirring, gospel-inspired melody of Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” juxtaposes the rapid succession of imagery, presenting glimpses of the joys and traumas of black life in the United States, which the artist sees as nuanced, beautiful, and multifaceted.

Opening Reception
Thursday, June 28, 2018 | 6:00 PM
Media are invited to take a first look at We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985 and Arthur Jafa: Love is the Message, The Message is Death. At 6:00 PM, there will be a public talk with ICA assistant curator Jessica Hong and curators Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley, organizers of We Wanted a Revolution at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by a special opening reception that will be open to the public. RSVP to Margaux Leonard, mleonard@icaboston.org.

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.

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and Rujeko Hockley, former Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum. The Boston presentation is coordinated by Jessica Hong, Assistant Curator, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Support for the Boston presentation is provided by David and Leslie Puth.

Largest museum exhibition to date of Kevin Beasley’s work

First in-depth solo exhibition of Caitlin Keogh features all-new body of work

 

On May 9, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens solo exhibitions of Kevin Beasley and Caitlin Keogh, offering a closer look at the work of these important emerging artists.

Kevin Beasley
May 9 – August 26
One of the most exciting artists to emerge in recent years, New York–based Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) uniquely combines sound and clothing—his core artistic materials—in stunning, densely packed sculptures and immersive acoustic experiences. Kevin Beasley, the largest museum exhibition to date of his artwork, will present a selection of sculptures made over the past five years. The exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator.

“Beasley carries forward strong threads of appropriation and improvisation developed in the practices of artists such as Noah Purifoy and David Hammons,” says Erickson. “Like these artists, the importance of personal memory and lived experience intersects with broader examinations of power and race in America.”

Beasley’s early works harnessed the physical qualities of sound, deploying vibrations and echoes that penetrate the bodies of both performers and audience. He has embedded microphones and other electronic musical equipment in sculptures made of sneakers and foam, manipulating their sonic possibilities in his live performances. Objects and clothing, often the artist’s own, are central in Beasley’s diverse sculptural work, ranging from compositions of shredded t-shirts and hoodies to fitted hats, du-rags, and basketball jerseys.

More recent works are constructed from colorfully patterned housedresses stiffened with resin that stand on the floor and protrude from the walls. Appearing like satellite dishes or clusters of ghostly figures, these works become conduits for absent bodies and histories that the artist evokes through color, pattern, and texture. Rather than contrasting the materiality of objects to the immateriality of music and performance, as is so often the case, Beasley forges strong affinities between the physical and the aural in his multidisciplinary practice.

Caitlin Keogh: Blank Melody
May 9 – August 26
Caitlin Keogh: Blank Melody is the first in-depth solo museum presentation of New York–based artist Caitlin Keogh (b. 1982, Anchorage, Alaska) and will feature an all-new body of work. Keogh’s work considers the history of gender and representation, the articulation of personal style, and the construction of artistic identity. Her vivid, seductive paintings combine the graphic lines of hand-drawn commercial illustration with the bold matte colors of the applied arts to reimagine fragments of female bodies, natural motifs, pattern, and ornamentation. Drawing from clothing design, illustration, and interior decoration as much as art history, Keogh’s large-scale canvases dissect elements of representations of femininity with considerable wit, pointing to the underlying conditions of the production of images of women. The exhibition is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator.

“The fragmented and idealized female body is a loaded political metaphor in Keogh’s figuration, symptomatic of the kinds of violence that too often undergird representations of women,” says De Blois. “Each of her paintings reduces a constellation of references to their simplest form as a self-contained image, in order to emphasize their specific poetic and metaphoric capacities to address such concerns.”

The exhibition takes its title from an interpretive poem written by Charity Coleman for Keogh’s recent artist book Headless Woman with Parrot (2017). “Blank Melody” comes from a line in Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves (1931), a book comprised of soliloquies spoken by its multiple characters. For the exhibition, Keogh is creating a new body of work—a tight-knit group of paintings, text-based drawings on mirror that use the poem as material, and painted wooden furniture made with the artist Graham Anderson—in response to and in conversation with Coleman’s poem, exploring the interplay between text and its illustrative interpretation.

Artist bios

About Kevin Beasley
Beasley currently lives and works in New York City. He grew up in Virginia and received a B.F.A. from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 2007 and an M.F. A. from Yale in 2012. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Latvia (2017); Casey Kaplan, New York (2017); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); and the High Line, New York (2015).  He has a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the fall of 2018. In 2016, he completed inHarlem: Kevin Beasley, a year-long public art project through the Studio Museum. He has recently presented performances at CounterCurrent17, in collaboration with Project Row Houses, Houston (2017); and Lincoln Center in New York (2016); and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2016). His work was included in When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South, which traveled to the ICA/Boston in 2014. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Tate Modern, London.

About Caitlin Keogh
Keogh was born in Anchorage, Alaska in 1982. She lives and works in New York. Keogh received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union School of Art, New York and a M.F.A from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Keogh’s work has recently been shown at White Cube, London (2017), 12th A.I.R. Biennial, New York (2017), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016), Queens Museum, New York (2013), Melas Papadopolous, Athens (2013), MoMA PS1, New York (2012), and Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland (2011).

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.

Support for Kevin Beasley is generously provided by Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, The Coby Foundation, Ltd., Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi, and Miko McGinty.

New project by artist Saya Woolfalk and six-year-old daughter Aya invites visitors to contribute their own art using digital programming language Scratch

Saya Woolfalk is a New York-based artist who uses science fiction, technology, and fantasy to re-imagine the world and think about how combining cultures can create more utopian societies. In Hybrid-Digital Home, Saya Woolfalk has collaborated with her six-year-old daughter Aya Woolfalk Mitchell, to reinvent the ICA’s Bank of America Art Lab as a warm domestic environment made up of a lively combination of textile patterns from around the world and computer-generated patterns based on visitor drawings created in Scratch. Developed at MIT, Scratch is a free programming language and online community where children can program and share interactive media. Taking pride of place in the center of the room is a large-scale work, drawn by hand then digitally altered by Aya Woolfalk Mitchell.
 
Visitors of all ages are invited to contribute drawings to be digitally patternized and added to the wall, creating a collaboratively generated portrait of home.
 
Meet the artists on Saturday, April 14 from 12–2 PM
Visitors are invited to meet the artists and learn about their creative process as a mother-daughter team. More information at icaboston.org.
 
Learn to use Scratch at an ICA family workshop on August 4
Visit icaboston.org for more details.
 
Also on view
Hybrid-Digital Home will be open during the ICA’s exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today. This group exhibition examines how the internet has radically changed the field of art, especially in its production, distribution, and reception. The exhibition comprises a broad range of works across a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—that all investigate the extensive effects of the internet on artistic practice and contemporary culture.

About the artist
Saya Woolfalk (Japan, 1979) received a B.A. from Brown University and a M.F.A from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has recently been exhibited at Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse  NY(2016), Kenucky Museum of Art and Craft, Lexington KY (2016), and Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA (2015).  In 2015, Woolfalk collaborated with her daughter Aya Woolfalk Mitchel on The Pollen Catchers’ Color Mixing Machine, a six-wall mural at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, New York, NY.
 
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.

Hybrid-Digital Home is supported in part by the Raymond T. & Ann T. Mancini Family Foundation.

Artful ways to spend your days: art, events, and fun for you, your family, and friends all around Boston. 

  • Palehound w/ Oompa, Melissa Lozada-Oliva at The Sinclair
    Fri, Mar 16 | 8–11:30 PM
    THE SINCLAIR, 52 cHURCH sT, cAMBRIDGE
    The sophomore album from the Boston trio Palehound, A Place I’ll Always Go, is a frank look at love and loss, cushioned by indelible hooks and gently propulsive, fuzzed-out rock. Catch them with the incredible Oompa, a nationally-renowned, Boston-born, poet, educator, and lyricist, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva, a poet and educator living in New York!

    Can you say Friyay?

  • ICA After 5: Crochet Soiree
    Fri, Mar 16 | 5–8 PM
    Grab a hook and join the party – veteran and newbie crocheters welcome! Explore the new installment of the ICA Collection: Entangled in the Everyday, and get inspired. Then learn the basics of crochet (or bring your own project!) and start your masterpiece.
    Free with museum admission

  • Closing Reception Boston Does Boston XI
    Fri, Mar 16 | 6–8 PM
    PROOF GALLERY, 516 EAST 2ND STREET, SOUTH BOSTON
    This year, in the eleventh Boston Does Boston, six artists sense an equilibrium of wills — a latent restlessness. (A document) a picture (the picture?) Finally, an image on the verge — something alert- work toward it.
    Last Chance

  • Let’s Shoot Boston x Boston Girl Collective Mixer
    Sat, Mar 17 | 12–3 PM
    WAREHOUSE XI, 11 SANBORN COURT, SOMERVILLE
    a community networking event focused on the womxn of our community. They will be taking over Warehouse XI, a creative event space where people will come together for an afternoon of speed dates, a community photography project, and open conversation and laughs. Members of LSB, BGC, and new friends are all welcome.
    Mix, mingle, collaborate + create!

  • Members Bring a Friend for Free Weekend
    Sat, Mar 17–Sun, Mar 18 | 10 AM–4 PM
    Attention members! Did you know you can bring a friend for free for the opening weekend of every new exhibition? The weekend of March 17 to 18, be among the first to see the ICA’s new collection exhibtion Entangled in the Everyday. This exhibition presents major works that showcase artists’ engagement and entanglement with the everyday. Interest in common materials and quotidian subjects has been a defining theme of artistic practice in the 20th century, inspiring Cubist collage, found sculpture, and the widespread embrace of photography. Take advantage of this great benefit and introduce your museum to friends and family!
    Bring your BFF

  • Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition Featuring Rez Abbasi + Dan Weiss
    Sun, Mar 18 | 7:30 PM
    With Mahanthappa on alto saxophone, Rez Abbasi on guitar, and Dan Weiss on tabla, Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition creates a mesmerizing brand of jazz blended with eastern Indian roots music. The vibrant presence of Indian rhythmic and melodic elements is supercharged in a modern improvisational framework born of the New York jazz scene.
    Don’t miss this fiery blend

  • Opening Night Juan Obando: Full Collabs
    Fri, Mar 16 | 7–10 PM
    DISTILLERY GALLERY, 516 EAST 2ND STREET, SOUTH BOSTON
    Full Collabs showcases a new body of work by Obando exploring this newfound landscape through app development, photo-installation, sculpture, and video. This exhibition proposes an immersive reflection on the circular logic of capitalism, the closed loops of ideology, and the tensions between public and private signaling modeled by digital media.
    See It First

  • Get Cozy + Explore Our Collection
    Dive into the ICA’s collection from the comfort of your coziest spot. 
    Get your art on

  • The Society of Arts + Crafts
    100 Pier 4 Boulevard, Suite 200, Boston,
    Visit our new neighbors and check out their current exhibitions, shop, or learn more about CraftBoston. The mission of the Society of Arts and Crafts is to support excellence in crafts by encouraging the creation, collection, and conservation of the work of craft artists and by educating and promoting public appreciation of fine craftsmanship.
    Get crafty

  • Seaport Beer Run
    Sundays | 10:30 AM
    Harpoon Brewery
    Starting and finishing at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston’s Seaport District, this 6.5-mile guided running tour takes runners at an easy pace through historic sights including the Old North Church and the final resting place of beer brewer and patriot Samuel Adams.
    Brews + views