Come Free by Sea!
For the rest of June and all of July, Boston Harbor Cruises is offering FREE rides on its Cultural Connector, a commuter ferry connecting major Boston cultural institutions.
Stops include Fan Pier (for the ICA), Central Wharf (for access to the New England Aquarium), and Fort Point Channel (for the Boston Children’s Museum, Tea Party Ship and Museum, the Rose Kennedy Greenway, and more).
For more information and schedules, go to bostonharborcruises.com.
Boston, Mass. (June 8, 2106) — Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), announced today the acquisition of Ashes, a momentous video installation by award-winning British artist Steve McQueen. A standout at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Ashes will make its U.S. debut at the ICA, where it will be on view from Feb. 15 through July 9, 2017.
“Ashes is a remarkable work of art; its visual and visceral power made an indelible impression on those of us fortunate enough to experience it in Venice. Now, through an extraordinary act of generosity from ICA Trustee Tristin Mannion and her husband Martin Mannion, the ICA will be able to share the experience of Ashes with our audiences for generations to come,” said Medvedow.
“Steve McQueen is one of Britain’s most influential artists, known for his film and video installations as well as feature films such as ‘Hunger’ and ‘Twelve Years a Slave.’ Ashes expands on McQueen’s subjects of the political body, and the ways in which bodies can be confined and defined by history, labor, and the legacies of colonialism and globalism,” said Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
McQueen met Ashes, a charismatic young fisherman in Grenada while filming another work in 2002. Shot on soft, grainy Super 8 film by renowned cinematographer Robby Müller, one screen of the installation portrays Ashes balancing on the prow of a bobbing boat, sailing through blue Caribbean water and sky. He is surrounded by the open air and sea, completely at home in his world. Ashes’ vitality and presence in this projection stand in contrast to the content of the second video projected on the screen’s other side, made eight years later, after Ashes’ death. The crisp, high definition video, shows the meticulous creation of Ashes’ gravestone and the digging of his grave. This footage provides the soundtrack to both projections, a precise, visceral soundscape of fabrication and digging overlaid by Ashes’ friend narrating his fate.
“Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life,” said McQueen. “We live with ghosts in our everyday.”
About Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen was born in London in 1969. His work has been collected by museums throughout the world, including Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and the Musee National d’Art Moderne George Pompidou, Paris. His film Five Easy Pieces showed at the ICA/Boston in 1995, one of his earliest screenings in the US. McQueen represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2009. A recent and highly acclaimed survey of his work was co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Schaulager, Basel. McQueen won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for his feature Hunger, the only British director to be granted the prize, and the FIPRESCI prize for Shame at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. 12 Years a Slave was awarded three Oscars at the latest Academy Awards, including Best Film. Having been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE, 2002), McQueen was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honors for services to the Visual Arts. He lives and works in Amsterdam and London.
About the ICA Collection
In 2006, the ICA made the pivotal decision to start a collection. Offering a diverse overview of national and international artworks in a range of media, the collection provides an important resource for contemporary culture in Boston. This summer, the ICA marks 10 years of collecting with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date, First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, this exhibition features over 100 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. It brings together audience favorites as well as new acquisitions, many of which are on view at the ICA for the first time. This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is on view at the ICA from Aug. 17, 2016, through Jan. 16, 2017.
About the ICA
An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for over 75 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; 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 Web site at www.icaboston.org.
Image Credit
Steve McQueen Ashes, 2002-2015; Two channel synchronized HD video transferred from 8mm and 16mm film, with audio, projected onto a two-sided screen, posters; 20 min. 31 sec. Installation at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris. Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele.
(BOSTON, MA — May 24, 2016) – The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) marks 10 years of collecting with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date, First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, this exhibition features more than 100 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. It brings together audience favorites as well as new acquisitions, many of which are on view at the ICA for the first time. A new, multimedia web platform, including texts by current and former ICA curators, accompanies the exhibition. This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is on view at the ICA from Aug. 17, 2016, through Jan. 16, 2017.
“First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA marks and celebrates a monumental 10 years at the ICA. This series of simultaneous exhibitions reveals the driving visions of curators and collectors, the social, political, material and aesthetic concerns of contemporary artists, and the history of ICA exhibitions over the past many years,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA.
Conceived as a series of interrelated and stand-alone exhibitions, First Light is organized into thematic, artist-specific, and historical chapters that each tell a different story. Highlights include major singular works from the collection, such as a newly acquired monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker; groupings of work by artists held in-depth in the collection such as Louise Bourgeois, Rineke Dijkstra, and Nan Goldin; and a gallery dedicated to objects from The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women. In order to accommodate the breadth of stories within the collection, several chapters will switch out halfway through the exhibition’s run. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women and Soft Power galleries (described below) will be on view for the show’s entirety, serving as anchors to the overall exhibition.
“In 10 years, the ICA has built a great variety within the collection, ranging from historically significant work of figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois to the contemporary explorations of leading artists such as Kara Walker and Paul Chan,” said Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. “The work in First Light represents a broad range of art making today by artists who explore the issues of our time.”
The title of the exhibition is taken from Paul Chan’s 2005 projected digital animation 1st Light, one of the first works to enter the ICA’s collection. This significant moving-image work highlights the ICA’s aim to collect works of art in diverse media and by important contemporary artists with a critical voice.
First Light explores narratives from biography and material to feminism and appropriation in the following sections or chapters:
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women
On view Aug. 17, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is the cornerstone of the ICA’s growing collection. The collection includes artists working in diverse media who have made significant contributions to art over the past 40 years. This exhibition is arranged by various media and subject matters, highlighting the collection’s strength in works of sculpture and assemblage, as well as drawing and painting. Included are signature works by Marlene Dumas, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Mendieta, Cornelia Parker, Doris Salcedo, Kara Walker, among others, in addition to salient historical precedents set by figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. Together, these works examine issues of the political, personal, and social body, and larger concepts of identity, all in distinct and thought-provoking ways. This presentation of The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women demonstrates the strength of the ICA’s expanding collection and how the collection engages in critical discourses in the arts as well as broader social and cultural contexts. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
Soft Power
On view Aug. 17, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
Formed by pliable materials including rope, thread, string, and fabric, the works in Soft Power derive their presence and power from, on the one hand, the seductive textures, structures, and surfaces of textiles, and on the other, the evocative social and cultural connotations these materials provoke. The smears and patterns of Kai Althoff’s gloss paint on fabric conflate painting and body in a surreal clothing-like fragment, while Alexandre Da Cunha’s BUST XXXV lurks like a floating figure, shrouded in its uncanny cover of mop and string. Sculptures by Josh Faught, Françoise Grossen, Charles LeDray, and Robert Rohm—crocheted, knotted, and sewn—variously lean against the wall, sprawl, pile on the floor, and hang on the wall to evoke the body by its covering, adornment, and poses only possible through their shared soft construction. Soft Power is organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
Question Your Teaspoons
On view Aug. 17–Oct. 2, 2016
This exhibition explores the sphere of the domestic in the making and meaning of art. A counterpoint to such celebrated contexts as the artist’s studio and the public sphere, the home has often served artists, especially female artists, as a crucial site for the creation of their work. Artists in this exhibition derive inspiration from the objects, relationships, and aesthetics that surround them. Sherrie Levine, Doris Salcedo, and Diane Simpson reimagine mundane objects in their sculptural works; Latoya Ruby Frazier, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol probe familial relations through their photographs; and Chantal Joffe and Mickalene Thomas offer striking paintings of intimate interior scenes. The title of this exhibition is a quote from Georges Perec, the great cataloguer of everyday life who challenged readers to scrutinize the ordinary. To “question your teaspoons” is to pay attention to—and bring new attention to—a quotidian thing, to study life in order to live it differently. Question Your Teaspoons is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin
On view Aug.17–Oct. 2, 2016
The ICA has rich holdings of works by Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin, two leading figures in contemporary photography with a keen interest in portraiture. Both artists have a history with the ICA: the museum hosted Goldin’s first solo museum exhibition in 1985 and one of Dijkstra’s first surveys in the United States in 2001. Referencing both the historical genre of portraiture and documentary-style photography, these artists expound upon these traditions in divergent and unique ways. Goldin’s bold images depict her loved ones and closest acquaintances caught in intimate moments. From the artist’s mother laughing to a drag queen lounging at home, her compositions are vibrant and rich, powerfully emotive, and full of psychological intent. Dijkstra’s stark portraits, on the other hand, present the subjects in heightened focus and repose, stripped bare of context. Both artists subtly and overtly examine the shifting nature of identity and self. Goldin’s subjects are in action, capturing an instant within a broader narrative, exploring various gender identities, while Dijkstra’s subjects, including new mothers and children growing into adolescence or adulthood, are at the cusp of unpredictable chapters in their lives. These works, ultimately capturing everyday moments, encourage the viewers to intimately engage with the pictured subjects, and to seek out clues of their personal lives and character, reflecting our own searches for the extra in the ordinary and the thrill in the mundane. Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin is organized by Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant.
The Freedom of Information
On view Oct. 8, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
The Freedom of Information is a concise survey of artworks that employ strategies of appropriation, from repurposing and rephotographing mass-media images to referencing and copying objects from art history or American consumer culture. While key moments in the history of artistic appropriation (such as the readymade, collage, and montage) date back to the early 20th century, it was in the 1970s and 80s that the critical terms of these practices were established in the context of a new generation of influential artists. The Freedom of Information traces a particular lineage of appropriation that accounts for the variety of its different models. Here, an intergenerational group of artists “take” materials from sources such as books, postcards, television, or art-specific contexts, manipulating them using cameras, printers, or scanners. The works in The Freedom of Information reveal that while such forms of repetition are historically rooted, appropriation remains a critically urgent means with which to address a culture saturated with images. Artists in The Freedom of Information include: Dara Birnbaum, Carol Bove, Anne Collier, Shepard Fairey, Gilbert & George, Leslie Hewitt, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Klara Liden, Cady Noland, Thomas Ruff, Sara VanDerBeek, Charline von Heyl, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol, and Vija Celmins. The Freedom of Information is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant.
Louise Bourgeois
On view Oct. 8, 2016–Jan.16, 2017
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Louise Bourgeois worked for more than 70 years in a variety of materials—including wood, bronze, marble, steel, rubber, and fabric—to create a distinctive and expansive body of work. Blending abstraction and figuration, Bourgeois delved into the struggles of everyday life to create personally cathartic objects that reference the body, sexuality, family, trauma, and anxiety. Since the ICA’s exhibition Bourgeois in Boston (2007), the museum has acquired a number of her works; this selection brings together sculptures and works on paper to consider her use of framing devices. From the enclosures and doors in her large-scale cell sculptures to vitrines, borders, and platforms, the partition of space recurs in Bourgeois’s work. These “frames” serve various ends, but each articulates a kind of boundary — an inside and an outside, an object and its space, the very divisions Bourgeois so famously disrupted in her life’s work. Louise Bourgeois is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
Acknowledgements
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by Christie’s.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Tristin and Martin Mannion, and Cynthia and John Reed.
Photo by Darial Sneed
Heidi Latsky on Dancing, Disability, and Changing How We Look
The groundbreaking choreographer discusses her daring movement installation ON DISPLAY, coming to the ICA in June.
#hldondisplay
For four weekend days in June, choreographer Heidi Latsky will present her movement installation ON DISPLAY at various locations around the ICA.
ON DISPLAY confronts our tendency to judge people by their physical appearance. For four hours on each of four days, more than 30 local performers representing the dance and disability communities will place themselves on display in this commentary on the body as spectacle and society’s obsession with body image. By reverting the gaze, the performers draw attention to the complex relationship between viewer and viewed, an attention that permeates the everyday existence of people who are different in some physical way.
Latsky has had a longtime interest in dance that pushes conventional boundaries. A former dancer in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, she has presented work at the ICA on two previous occasions: in 2009, when she presented the groundbreaking GIMP Project, for disabled and nondisabled dancers, and in 2011 as part of a reunion of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company dancers.
For International Day for Persons with Disabilities on December 3, Latsky is working to organize a worldwide event in which local groups all over the world will present ON DISPLAY in their own communities.
The ICA spoke with Latsky about ON DISPLAY.
How did you get interested in working with people with disabilities?
It’s a Boston story, actually. Jeremy Alliger invited me to go to his International Festival of Wheelchair Dance there, but I didn’t understand it, and I never went. Then in 2006, he met a visual artist who was a bilateral amputee—she had no fingers and no lower legs—who had just gotten a grant to make a solo for herself and perform it. She didn’t have a lot of training, and she really didn’t know how she was going to do it, so she wanted to find a choreographer to work with. Jeremy thought I might be interested in this project, and I grabbed the opportunity. I talked to her on the phone, I loved her voice, and then I met with her in New York for the first time for lunch.
As I was walking into the restaurant, I thought, I’m going to have lunch with someone I don’t know, who has no fingers. And then I was up against that whole thing: Do I look? Do I not look? Do I say something? Do I not say something? Do I acknowledge the fact that her hands look different? But I didn’t have to worry, because she was so gracious and put me immediately at ease. So we started the work process, and through that process, she became my muse. I kind of fell in love with her. I had such an interesting time creating this 25-minute solo for this woman and learning about the disability community—I didn’t know anything about disability—and I started wondering, could I do this again? And that was the beginning of the GIMP Project.
Isn’t it interesting that the onus is often on the person who is different to put the other at ease?
I can’t even remember how she did it, but I think she just acknowledged her disability, and we got it out in the open and then we could get past it. It was my issue that I hadn’t ever met anybody with a disability that I knew of, and I was uncomfortable. But the more I was exposed to people with disabilities, the easier it became. And that’s a lot of what I’m trying to do with my work: expose people to people with all kinds of bodies, on stage or in an art installation, with the hopes that seeing a diverse group will redefine what they see as beautiful, or virtuosic—to shatter stereotypes, have people see things in a different way.
How did ON DISPLAY come about?
In 2009 I received a Creative Capital grant, and as part of that grant they invite you to a retreat where you give a seven-minute presentation to an audience of funders, presenters, and fellow artists. I can talk about my work at great length, but in my experience, people don’t really get it unless they see a visual. There are so many preconceived notions of the kind of dancers I have and what it means when you say disabled or nondisabled. So for the presentation it was important for me to show a five-minute clip of GIMP.
A museum curator sought me out afterwards and confessed that he was very ashamed of his response to the video. He said he saw the inherent beauty of a sculpture with an atypical shape, but he could not experience that with a real person.
As he expressed both shame and fascination, I more fully comprehended the complexity of his reactions. He’d been living in museums for so long, and really appreciating and thinking how beautiful the artifacts are—some of which are bodies without arms or limbs—and then when he saw a real person, in a film, who only had one arm, he was repulsed. He was compelled, and saw the beauty in it, but also repulsed.
When I heard that, something clicked in my head. I thought, what would happen if these sculptures were real people? Would that help people shift their perceptions about beauty? ON DISPLAY developed as a vehicle to address what I perceived as this common response to my work.
Initially I was thinking we could have real people alongside sculptures, in a museum. I was toying with the idea of a sculpture garden, or if it was indoors, a sculpture court—that was actually David Henry’s idea [David Henry is Bill T. Jones Director of Performing and Media Arts at the ICA]. Then for the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2015, I went into partnership with the New York City Mayor’s Office, specifically the Commissioner for People with Disabilities; he wanted to have events all throughout the city to expose the public to people with disabilities. So I started doing this sculpture court, in Times Square, in Chinatown, on the High Line, in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I also made a more elaborate version of ON DISPLAY, which included a film and a score that’s like a ticker tape of objective physical descriptions of 30 different people recited in a robotic voice. (The text also appears on a screen.) That version is much more choreographed, with dancers moving on certain prompts. It’s about a 20-minute set, and when the words go really slowly across the screen, the dancers move really slowly as well. That’s the full version of ON DISPLAY.
The sculpture courts, like we’re doing at the ICA, are beautifully elegant in their simplicity. They’re performed in silence. The cast or sculptures are unified by wearing white because white represents/reflects all colors.
It seems like it must be really intense for the performers.
I have a group of 35 performers, some of whom had never performed before, and mostly not dancers. Every time I reach out to them, they want to do it. It’s truly a meditative experience, because once they drop into the task, they aren’t listening to anybody but themselves. When they’re all breathing together, when it falls into place, it feels like they’re a real community, and it feels really good. The only complaint I’ve ever had is when we’ve been on a cold, hard ground, like standing in Times Square barefoot.
It’s not difficult to be so on display?
That’s the beauty of it—they’re out there being watched, but they’re also watching. So the viewers become the viewed, and the relationship keeps shifting.
So the performers really respond to their surroundings.
Each person chooses how they respond to their surroundings in their own way and within the structure of the improvisation. We’re creating a real sculpture court, where people can walk around and get close to the performers. We encourage people to take photos and post about it and talk about it online. When a performer opens their eyes, it’s possible that somebody’s right there. And they have the choice of continuing to look at them, or closing their eyes and moving again.
The other day a viewer said that at first it felt like the performers were very uniform, but then everybody’s choices – how they opened and closed their eyes, how their body was moving – were so unique to each person. It made me really happy that she got that, because that’s what it’s about.
And the group is a combination of dancers and non-dancers?
Yes, it’s not just dancers. That wouldn’t work. And it can’t be only people with disabilities either. In order to fulfill our vision it has to be very, very diverse—all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, races, people with disabilities, people without disabilities. There are people who have some dance experience and want to use their bodies and those who have never done anything with their bodies but want to experience something like this.
That’s wonderful. So you look for a range of body types as well?
Yeah. For our performance at the NYU Skirball Center, we had a woman who was eight months pregnant. She was huge, and it was amazing. She loved doing it and I loved having her pregnant state out there in all its glory. In addition, that cast of 30 included performers from Indian and African American heritages, your typical very tall model person, a couple of deaf actors, a burn victim, wheelchair users, a transgender person, people with cerebral palsy, older people, heavyset people, little people. It was really diverse, although I think sometimes people don’t see the uniqueness of each individual until they watch for a while. That’s why we encourage viewers to really take their time, find their favorite person, photograph them, experience them.
Photo by Holly Andres
ICA Summer 2016 Events Now on Sale!
Summer is just around the corner! Our summer lineup includes:
- DJ sets by tUnE-yArDs, DJ Windows 98 (Win Butler), and Beirut
- cooking demos (and tastings!) by area chefs
- outdoor Grace Jones film screening
- free dance performances
- epic First Fridays
- free Harborwalk Sounds concerts on Thursday nights
- and more!
The tans may fade, but the memories won’t. Oh, those summer nights.
Experience the art of summer at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) this season with the museum’s exciting line-up of exhibitions, performances, outdoor art and events.
NEW Outdoor Sculpture on the Waterfront
Ugo Rondinone: Moonrise Sculptures
MAY 17 – SEPT. 11, 2016
Best known for his large-scale sculptures and installations, Ugo Rondinone (born 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland) works in a diverse array of media, including photography, painting, drawing, and video. Rondinone’s Moonrise series consists of nine-foot-tall figures, first modeled in clay, then cast in aluminum, and finally painted, with the hand and finger marks of the artists remaining visible. Each is named after a month of the calendar year. Time—here represented by the relationship between moon, tide, and calendar—has been a longstanding interest of the artist’s. Derived from a series of masks, these monumental visages playfully distort faces and figures with smiles and grimaces, welcoming wonder and empathy in equal measure. In these works, his first figurative sculptures, Rondinone creates a kind of uncanny romanticism. Installed outside of the ICA, MOONRISE. east. april and MOONRISE. east. may, both from 2005, will playfully welcome visitors to the ICA all summer long.
DANCE
JUNE 11, 12, 18 + 19 | various times throughout the day TBD
ON DISPLAY: A Movement Installation
Concept and choreography by Heidi Latsky
Various locations around the ICA, FREE
Created by former Bill T. Jones dancer Heidi Latsky, ON DISPLAY addresses our propensity to judge people by their physical appearance. For four hours on each of four days, up to 30 local performers representing the dance, disability, and fashion communities will place themselves on display in this commentary on the body as spectacle and society’s obsession with body image. The performers draw attention to the complex relationship between viewer and viewed, an attention that permeates the everyday existence of people who are different in some way.
JULY 23 + 24 | Museum Hours
Maria Hassabi
Open rehearsal for STAGED
Free with museum admission
Summer Stages Dance at the ICA is proud to welcome acclaimed choreographer Maria Hassabi as artist-in-residence this summer. From July 10 to 24, Hassabi and her dancers will take over the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater to develop a new work called STAGED, which will premiere in New York City in October and return to the ICA in 2017.
As an artist and choreographer, Hassabi has developed a distinct practice relating the body to the still image and sculptural object; she recently presented an intensive installation at the Museum of Modern Art called Plastic, in which dancers moved throughout the museum at a barely perceptible pace during all museum hours for an entire month. For her new work, she returns to her concerns regarding the relationship between performer and audience, expectations of spectacle, and the interplay between rehearsed and unrehearsed movement.
Hassabi’s work has been presented in theaters, festivals, museums, and public spaces worldwide She is a recipient of the 2015 Herb Alpert Award, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts.
The ICA and Summer Stages Dance have teamed up for the past 10 years to host some of today’s leading choreographers as they develop new work; past participants have included Faye Driscoll, Rashaun Mitchell, Trajal Harrell, Miguel Guttierez, and Alexandra Beller.
MUSIC
HARBORWALK SOUNDS
THURSDAYS | JUNE 30 – SEPTEMBER 1 | 6 PM
Now in its 10th season, this partnership between Berklee College of Music and the ICA, featuring the city’s most talented young musicians—all presented FREE—is a perennial summertime favorite. With the fresh ocean breeze, fresh food, and fresh music there is no better way to spend a summer evening in Boston. Visit icaboston.org for complete schedule.
SUMMER FRIDAYS AT THE ICA
FRIDAYS| JUNE 3 – AUGUST 31
Celebrate the season at the ICA every Friday from June through August. We’ve got a slew of summertime fun for you to bask in harborside, from DJs spinning your summer soundtrack on the harbor to perennial favorites Talking Taste and First Fridays
TALKING TASTE
FRIDAYS| JUNE 10, 17 & 24 – 6:30 PM
For the sixth year running, the ICA is bringing new and exciting tastes to the Boston waterfront this summer with its popular Talking Taste series. Held on the grandstand, weather permitting, or in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, Talking Taste events include a cooking demonstration—with samples!—and audience Q+A. Come hear expert tips and trade secrets from some of our city’s most creative, celebrated chefs. Chef details at icaboston.org.
FIRST FRIDAYS
Free for members / $15 nonmembers
Join us the first Friday of every month for an evening of art, fun activities, dancing and music.
JUNE 3 | Caribbean Dream
We kick off summer and Carribbean American Heritage month simultaneously with a preview of Boston Caribbean Fashion Week, live performances, and Carnival costuming.
JULY 1 | Summer in the City
What better way to survive those simmering days than with some backyard favorites (cornhole anyone?), a seaside breeze, BBQ, and a live band?
AUGUST 4 | White Hot [Vol. 3]
This year we’re taking our annual waterfront white party to the next level. Don your most dapper summer whites and meet us harborside.
DJ NIGHTS
FRIDAYS JUL 8–AUG 26 | 5–9 PM
Advance sales: $5 ICA Members / $15 general admission
Day of: $10 ICA Members / $20 general admission
Fridays come alive on the waterfront as DJs spin on the ICA’s Vivian and Alan Hassenfeld Harborway. This series features prominent artists such as Tune-Yards and Beirut, celebrations of hip-hop, reggae, and disco in a gorgeous harbor setting. Visit icaboston.org for complete schedule.
EXHIBITIONS
OPENING THIS SUMMER:
Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood
JUNE 29 – OCT 16, 2016
Nalini Malani (b. 1946, Karachi) is India’s foremost video and installation artist and a committed activist for women’s rights. Born in Karachi in 1946, and currently living and working in Mumbai, Malani came to India as a refugee during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, an experience that deeply informs her work. This exhibition centers on Malani’s signature multimedia installation, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), the title of which comes from a poem by the revolutionary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The installation is inspired by East German writer and critic Christa Wolf’s 1984 novel Cassandra, about a struggling female artist and visionary. Combining imagery from Eastern and Western cultures, with sound, projected image, and light, In Search of Vanished Blood is an enthralling, immersive experience. The work comprises six 11-minute video projections streamed around the room through five clear Mylar cylinders, hand-painted with a variety of cultural and historical iconography, which hang in the center of the room. As the Mylar cylinders rotate, the colorful and layered imagery is projected onto the walls, creating a magical environment reminiscent of lantern slide presentations and other proto-cinema experiments in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The presentation of Malani’s immersive video installation will be accompanied by a selection of related works on paper.
Liz Deschenes
JUNE 29 – OCT 16, 2016
Deschenes is known for her lushly beautiful and meditative work in photography and sculpture, and since the early 1990s has produced a singular and influential body of work that probes the relationship between the mechanics of seeing, image-making processes, and modes of display. The first mid-career survey dedicated to Deschenes’s work, this exhibition will feature 20 years of her art, including explorations of various photographic technologies and the symbolic power of color, rich and nuanced work with photograms (a type of photographic image made without a camera), and sculptural installations that reflect the movements and light within a given space and respond to a site’s unique features. The artist will be creating a striking site-specific work comprised of 20 silver reflected photographic panels which will hang directly on the glass in the ICA’s John Hancock Founder’s Gallery overlooking Boston Harbor.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA
AUG 17, 2016 – JAN 16, 2017
Coinciding with the ten-year anniversary of ICA’s move to its iconic waterfront building, this exhibition will celebrate the museum’s first decade of collecting. Drawn entirely from ICA’s collection and featuring multiple thematic, artist-specific, and historical sections, the exhibition will bring together both new acquisitions and favorites from the permanent collection. Conceived as a series of interrelated and rotating stand-alone exhibitions, this presentation will highlight major singular works from the collection, such as a newly acquired monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker, as well as the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, groupings of work by artists held in depth such as Louise Bourgeois and Nan Goldin, and thematic and art-historical groupings. A new multimedia web platform will be created to mark the occasion.
ONGOING
Geoffrey Farmer
THROUGH JULY 17, 2016
Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967, Vancouver) is best known for his installations and large-scale, sculptural photo collages. This immersive survey of the artist’s recent major “paper works” presents room-sized installations composed of hundreds of small sculptures made of cutout photographs, fabric, and various supports. In these recent works, processions of figures assembled from fragments of book and magazine photography and illustration manifest the artist’s interest in the cross-pollination of historical and vernacular imagery. Each spectacular composition begins to chart the historical contours of our image-saturated contemporary culture, and suggest the recurring cultural themes and formal patterns. Farmer uses movement, sound, animation, puppet characters, and a panoply of highly choreographed bodies and characters to investigate world history from the different angles of its photographic and sculptural accounts.
Acknowledgments
Summer Stages @ICA is made possible, in part, with the support of George and Ann Colony and The Aliad Fund.
ICA First Fridays are sponsored by Citizens Bank.
Additional support for ICA First Fridays is provided by Harpoon Brewery
Support for Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood is generously provided by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, and Barbara Lee.
Support for Liz Deschenes is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough, Robert and Jane Burke, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, David and Leslie Puth, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by Christie’s.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Tristin and Martin Mannion, and Cynthia and John Reed.