Installation view, Taylor Davis Selects: Invisible Ground of Sympathy, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2023–24. Photo by Mel Taing.
Taylor Davis Selects: Invisible Ground of Sympathy is organized by Boston-based artist Taylor Davis, the first time an artist has been invited to curate an exhibition from the ICA’s permanent collection. In her artwork, Davis explores the relationship between object and viewer, often through precise manipulations of form. Taking up questions of orientation, space, identity, and perception, Davis’s work insists on the unique sense of presence and attention that each viewer brings to an encounter with a work of art. Davis is conceiving of Invisible Ground of Sympathy as an open field in which a constellation of artworks are assembled to activate their different emotional and psychological intensities. Considering themes of precarity, wonder, violence, and beauty, and situating the viewer at its center, Davis presents a personal take on the ineffable complexity of making sense of the present, and of not having language for an experience in the moment.