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Opening Aug. 24, the exhibition features a new body of paintings, works on paper, and artist books

(Boston, MA—JUNE 27, 2023) On August 24, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens Tammy Nguyen, the artist’s first solo museum presentation in the United States. Tammy Nguyen’s (b. 1984, San Francisco) gilded paintings are composite images that reconsider lesser-known histories against the backdrop of lush landscapes and varied symbols of violent conquest or soft power. For the ICA, the artist has created an interconnected body of 14 paintings, works on paper, and artist books. Inspired by East Asian landscape painting, these works are all related to the relationship between people and nature, landscape and wilderness, as articulated in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influential 1836 essay Nature, written in Concord, Massachusetts. Nguyen maps how ideas Emerson penned nearly 200 years ago have echoed across time and space to influence U.S. policies abroad, with a focus on Vietnam. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, ICA Associate Curator and Publications Manager, the exhibition is on view through January 28, 2024. 

“Nguyen’s unique paintings are both portraits and landscapes, in which figure and ground are collapsed together, equating humans to nature as in Emerson’s essay. Her new body of work explores the lasting influence of Emerson, a figure associated closely with Massachusetts, on ideas about nature that are still prevalent today,” said De Blois. 

Nguyen’s new works are tied together by the line “what is a farm but a mute gospel?” from Nature, which intimates Emerson’s idea that God is reflected everywhere in nature. Dense layers of foliage combine plants and trees of the U.S. Northeast with the flora and fauna of tropical environments to create jungle-like landscapes where everything is interwoven. Emerson is one of the figures who recurs throughout the new works, along with Jesus, Demeter, and Ngô Đình Diệm.  

Nguyen presents these seemingly disparate figures in parallel, connecting them using different seasons as experienced in the Northeast to create a new narrative around these known symbols. Jesus appears in the figure of the Christ of Vũng Tàu, a 105-foot statue in Vietnam on the top of Mount Nhỏ—both a legacy of colonialism and a path to salvation. Here, the Christ of Vũng Tàu suggests literally the Emersonian connection between God and landscape. Demeter features as the Ancient Greek goddess of harvest and agriculture, and, later, the patron saint of agriculture. Even after paganism was banned throughout the Roman Empire, farmers continued to pray to her as “Saint Demetra.” Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam from 1955 until he was captured and assassinated during the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. Diệm opened the door to U.S. involvement in Vietnam as part of his nation-building projects, including land reform, a topic that Nguyen explores across her new body of work.  

Nguyen’s vibrant paintings—whose symphonic space is made through overlaying painting, printing, drawing, metal leafing, and rubber stamping with custom-made tools—combine pictorial strategies of reflection and mirroring, drawn from Emerson’s philosophy of nature. In one large-scale painting, Nguyen mythologizes three figures involved in Vietnamese land reform programs whose passport photos she found in the National Archives of the United States. Their countenances are halved across the panels, portrayed against a panoramic landscape of mountains and overlaid with text drawn from documents found in archives. In another, a disc plow and illustrations of Vietnamese farmers found in the archives are juxtaposed with a depiction of the Battle of Lexington and Daniel Chester French’s The Minute Man (1874), a statue in Concord that depicts the revolutionary solider stepping away from his plow.  

Emerson, Jesus, Demeter, and Diệm appear again in the artist’s four collage-based works on paper. The texture and specificity of these works are taken from documents, including propaganda, found in the National Archives related to land reform programs in Vietnam. Across these works, she also includes the words from Ca Dao, propagandistic folk songs promoting land reform that circulated the countryside. 

Finally, four unique artist books—discrete objects unto themselves and the heart of Nguyen’s practice—are also tied to the four seasons and the recurring figures central to this body of work. The artist books are constructed to resemble the mountainous landscapes pictured throughout, tying together Emerson’s conception of landscape and how the Vietnamese landscape was conceived as part of land reform, especially through the lens of the U.S. involvement.  

Artist Biography 
Tammy Nguyen lives and works in Easton, Connecticut. Nguyen has a M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University, and a B.F.A. from Cooper Union. After finishing at Cooper Union, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam, where she remained for three years. She is Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She is the founder of independent publishing imprint Passenger Pigeon Press. Nguyen’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including Still Present!, 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Germany, and Greater New York 2021, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York. Nguyen’s artist books are in many notable collections, including Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Clark Art Institute Library, Williamstown, MA; Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; New York Public Library; Philadelphia Museum of Art Library, Philadelphia; and the Whitney Museum of American Art Library, New York. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Nguyen’s first novel, O, was published in 2022 with Ugly Duckling Presse. 

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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 on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 

Media Contact 
Theresa Romualdez, press@icaboston.org  

Credits 
Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Associate Curator and Publications Manager. 

This summer, Maravilla and sound healers will activate his sculptures in public sound baths, and the ICA will offer free workshops with community partners and organizations in East Boston.

(Boston, MA—May 4, 2023) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open the next season of the Watershed with a monumental installation by Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976, El Salvador). In Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, Maravilla expands on the Disease Thrower series with a newly commissioned sculpture: Mariposa Relámpago (Lightning Butterfly), the artist’s largest artwork to date. Once a school bus in the United States, Mariposa Relámpago had a second life as a transportation bus in El Salvador, and has now been transformed into a vibrational healing instrument by the artist. Drawing on his personal story of migration, illness, and recovery, Maravilla combines sculpture, painting, performative acts, and installation to create works grounded in activism and healing. The exhibition will also feature several additional artworks including: 8 new retablo paintings, Migratory Birds Riding the Celestial Serpent, 2021; Disease Thrower #0, #00, and #14, and a site-specific Tripa Chuca wall drawing, made in collaboration with an East Boston-based resident. On view May 25—September 4, 2023, Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Senior Curator, with Yutong Shi, Curatorial Assistant. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, the artist will lead free Sound Baths on June 10 and August 13. The ICA is also working closely with long-time community partner East Boston Neighborhood Health Center (EBNHC) and members of the East Boston Community Healing Center Project on several public programs during the exhibition’s run (full schedule and details below). 

“Over the past five years, the Watershed has provided unprecedented opportunities for artists to engage with issues of community concern through immersive works of art. With its focus on healing and migration, Guadalupe Maravilla’s ambitious, large-scale installation, including a transformed school bus, is uniquely suited for the Watershed,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “We look forward to welcoming audiences to experience the artist’s unique vision and ideas around community-based care and regeneration.” 

“Maravilla’s installations are amalgamations of animals, spirits, plants, and gongs that create multi-sensory experiences and nurture collective narratives of perseverance and humanity. His work is informed by his own experience recovering from cancer as an adult—an illness he links to the trauma he experienced as an unaccompanied minor migrating from El Salvador and the stresses of being undocumented,” said Erickson. 

Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago draws on Maravilla’s own migration experiences. His sculptures incorporate natural materials, handmade objects, and items collected by the artist while retracing the 3,000-mile migration route that he took as a child fleeing from El Salvador’s civil war to reunite with his parents at the age of eight. The artist explains that he began these trips “to confront trauma in order to heal it” and realized the objects he collected while traveling “were really charged and really powerful from those lands.” His finished artworks contain a cosmology of potent symbols and objects that connect the artist’s personal journey with ancient practices of the indigenous Mayan peoples; diverse spiritual and folk beliefs; and contemporary crises of disease, ecology, and war. The site-specific Tripa Chuca wall drawing is made by the artist and a local resident who shares a similar migration experience of displacement to form an index of cultural exchange. Tripa Chuca is a Salvadoran children’s drawing game in which participants draw lines that never intersect, connecting pairs of numbers to form an abstract pattern.  

Public Programs 
Sound Baths | June 10, August 13 at 12:15 PM and 3:30 PM
Maravilla incorporates sound baths into his practice, harnessing the sonic vibrations of healing instruments to create a space for meditation and restoration. Join the artist and other sound healers for an hour-long sound bath at the ICA Watershed. In this immersive, full-body experience, Maravilla will activate the congregation of sculptures including Mariposa Relámpago, which was once a school bus in the United States and had a second life as a transportation bus in El Salvador, and is now a vibrational healing instrument. 

Watershed Block Parties | June 17, August 13 from 11 AM to 3 PM 
The ICA Watershed’s Block Parties welcome over 900 people from the East Boston neighborhood and surrounding areas to experience art, music, food, and activities at the Watershed. This summer, the ICA is working with EBNHC and the Community Healing Project to lead drumming circles, reiki, yoga, and sound and healing activities at each block party. 

Community Workshops | July 16, August 6 at 2 PM 
The ICA will be holding two intimate and hands-on workshops with members of the East Boston Community Healing Center Project. In these workshops, healing practitioners will delve into their work through presentations and activities for attendees. The first workshop will be led by Arteterapia, and will focus on the health benefits of Latin American Dance; the second will be led by Nancy Slamet, from the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center and the EASTIE Coalition, alongside other local Qigong instructors, and will highlight the health benefits of Qigong.   

Additional Resources 
Accompanying Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago will be a behind-the-scenes video with the artist discussing his process and personal history. The video is produced by Doza Visuals in conjunction with the ICA. The ICA Mobile Guide on the Bloomberg Connects app will feature the artist discussing his practice, symbolism, and personal experience in a series of audio tracks recorded in both English and Spanish. 

East Boston Care Collectives 
The Watershed’s Harbor Room will feature a presentation on healing practices in East Boston, titled East Boston Care Collectives, including three videos created with East Boston–based community organizations—Eastie Farm, Maverick Landing Community Services, and Veronica Robles Cultural Center—to demonstrate practices they use to promote healing. All videos are produced by Doza Visuals in conjunction with the ICA. The Harbor Room will also include a drop-in artmaking activity co-authored by the East Boston Social Center’s Director of Joy, Krina Patel. 

Artist Biography 
Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976) received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His recent solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; and the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Olso were critically acclaimed with reviews in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Forbes, and NPR. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Olso; and Tate Modern, London, among others. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including; United States Artists Fellowship, 2023; Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award, 2022; Joan Mitchell Foundation Inaugural Fellowship, 2021; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & Ford Foundation Latinx Artist Fellowship, 2021; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2019; Soros Fellowship: Art Migration and Public Space, 2019; Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, 2016; and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award, 2003. He recently became an Art for Justice Artist Fellow, receiving the Art for Justice Grant, 2023. He has since directed this $100k grant to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he has been providing free meals and sound baths to undocumented immigrants, cancer survivors, and asylum seekers. 

About the Watershed 
In 2018, the ICA opened its new ICA Watershed to the public, expanding artistic and educational programming on both sides of Boston Harbor—the Seaport and East Boston. Located in the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina, the ICA Watershed transformed a 15,000-square-foot, formerly condemned space into a cultural asset to experience large-scale-art. It has since presented one immersive exhibition each summer, until it was closed to the public in 2020 to support the city and state in their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. During the pandemic, it was used as a food distribution site to address a direct need within the East Boston community, which experienced one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Boston. The cross-harbor connection to the Watershed was designed to deepen the vibrant intersection of contemporary art and civic life in Boston and is central to the ICA’s vision of art, civic life, and urban vitality. 

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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 on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.  

Exhibition Credits 

Support for Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago is generously provided by anonymous donors.  

Additional thanks to Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago media sponsor, El Planeta. 

(Boston, MA—May 2, 2023) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) announced today that Ruth Erickson has been appointed the museum’s Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Erickson will lead the vision and development of the ICA’s exhibitions and collection, in alignment with the ICA’s mission to present and serve diverse artists and audiences, and offer a global view of today’s contemporary art practices.

“I am positively elated that Ruth Erickson will serve as the ICA’s Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “As an art historian and a humanist, Ruth will lead with a keen eye, open heart, and clear vision for justice and the ways in which art, artists, and museums can make meaning, build community, and inspire hope and change.”

“I am thrilled to expand my work at the ICA, a place I know well and love deeply,” said Erickson. “I look forward to building upon a decade of collaboration with artists and colleagues across the museum to deepen and expand our engagement with audiences, amplify the impact and visibility of our permanent collection, and advance new art and ideas through commissions and significant exhibitions.”

Assuming the position June 1, Erickson will succeed Eva Respini, who is stepping down from the role after eight years at the ICA. Respini will return to the ICA as a guest curator for the forthcoming exhibition of Firelei Báez in March 2024, the artist’s first museum survey.

Currently serving as Mannion Family Senior Curator, Erickson has been a driving force in the ICA’s curatorial department since joining the museum in 2014. Among her many projects, she has organized major thematic group exhibitions, including the critically acclaimed To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood (2022), A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now (2022), and When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art (2019); a significant artist survey and publication Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist (2017); and solo presentations of María Berrío (2023), Barbara Kruger (2022), Vivian Suter (2019), Wangechi Mutu (2018), and Kevin Beasley (2018), among others. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the 2015 exhibition and publication Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–57 (for which she was co-editor and served as research fellow), Ruth Asawa: All is Possible (2021), Kevin Beasley (2018), Sue Williams (2015), and Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology (2014). Before joining the ICA, Erickson was a fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (2008–10) and served as curator at Burlington City Arts (BCA) (2004–7). She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.A. from Carleton College, Northfield, MN. Erickson is the recipient of a prestigious Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship in 2021.

Erickson’s forthcoming exhibition Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago opens at the ICA Watershed on May 25. The exhibition includes a major new commission by the artist – a large-scale vibrational healing instrument made from a transformed school bus – and is centered around ideas of community and care.

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. For more information, call 617-478-3100. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

On View at the Hirshhorn in Fall 2023 and in a joint presentation at LACMA and CAAM in Summer 2024

Exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph of Leigh’s work

(Boston, MA, March 15, 2023)—The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) welcomes home Simone Leigh’s work created for the Venice Biennale, kicking off a national tour that begins at the ICA on April 6 and runs through September 4, 2023. Leigh represented the United States at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, in a project commissioned by the ICA. 29 works will be presented in Simone Leigh, including 9 works exhibited at the U.S. Pavilion. The exhibition also features key early works that speak to the artist’s consistent interest in the forms and materials of Black feminist thought, and recent ceramics, bronzes, and videos.

Following its debut at the ICA, the exhibition will then move to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. from November 2023 through March 2024. The tour will conclude in a joint presentation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and California African American Museum (CAAM), on view June 2024 through January 2025 in Los Angeles. Simone Leigh is organized by Eva Respini, ICA Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Anni A. Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.

“Simone Leigh’s complex and profoundly moving work honors the agency and ideas of Black women, giving visibility to overlooked narratives and histories,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “We are thrilled to bring Simone Leigh’s art from Venice back to the U.S. as part of this landmark exhibition, so that audiences across the country have the opportunity to experience the work of this consequential and influential artist.”

“It is with pleasure that we expand this presentation to go beyond the works from Venice, including many recent works on view for the first time,” said Eva Respini, who was the Co-Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion and Curator of the exhibition. “This exhibition reveals and celebrates an artist working at the height of her artistic powers.” 

Featuring interrelated sculptures in ceramic, bronze, and raffia, the first galleries of the exhibition will display recent and new works made largely within the past five years. The exhibition culminates with Leigh’s historic Venice exhibition, presented at the ICA in a sequence that evokes the layout of the U.S. Pavilion, providing American audiences the opportunity to experience this historic installation. The exhibition concludes with Last Garment (2022), a bronze based on a 19th-century souvenir photograph of a Jamaican laundress that explores histories of labor, specifically the anonymous labor of Black women. The ICA presentation will feature a new, larger reflecting pool for Last Garment, breathtakingly situated with a sightline of Boston Harbor.

One of the most important artists working today, Leigh creates sculpture, video, installation, and social practice works that situate questions of Black femme, or female-identified, subjectivity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Leigh’s art addresses a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and traditions, with specific references to vernacular and hand-made processes from across the African diaspora, as well as forms traditionally associated with African art and ritual, all while mining historical gaps, inaccuracies, and fallacies in material and visual culture. Saidiya Hartman’s conception of “critical fabulation”—a strategy that invites historians, artists, and critics to creatively fill the gaps of history—provides a resonant framework for approaching Leigh’s work.

The exhibition features works at both intimate and large scale. A selection of Leigh’s table-top ceramic busts point to her fluency in the medium of ceramics, including references to the Black American folk art tradition of stoneware face vessels; these citations are also rehearsed in larger ceramic works, which draw on the vernacular traditions of the American South, Caribbean, and African continent, and challenge traditional hierarchies of art and labor. Domestic vessels such as bowls and jugs, cowrie shells, and busts are recurring motifs, and her readdress of these forms over time and in various materials underscores the remarkable consistency of Leigh’s vision.

In recent large-scale ceramic sculptures, Leigh merges the human body with traditional domestic containers, conjuring black woman’s labor and knowledge production. The intersection of architecture with the body is also central to her sculpture, such as the work Cupboard IX (2019), seen in the steel cage-like structures that the artist leaves bare or covered with raffia, evoking the womb, skirts, and sub-Saharan dwellings, often built by women and used as gathering spaces. 

In 2018, the artist began casting her sculptural works in bronze, creating statuary for both gallery presentations and public art commissions. Her bronzes combine figuration with domestic or architectural elements, such as in the 2019 sculpture Jug, featuring the head and torso of a woman’s body atop a large-scale vessel. Through their material choices, these bronzes embody a state of permanence and grandeur; with their overtly Black feminist and aesthetic references, Leigh’s bronzes also insist on the centrality—indeed, the necessity—of considering the agency of Black women as subjects in the cultural sphere. The exhibition will feature Leigh’s monumental 24-foot-tall bronze Satellite (2022), sited at the entrance of the ICA, broadcasting ideas around self-determination that are endemic to the work.

Leigh’s videos, often created in collaboration with other artists, draw from historical and fictional representations of Black women and femmes. Conspiracy (2022), made with filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, focuses on the performativity of making and the studio as a site of labor and care. In the video my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell (2011), Leigh and artist Chitra Ganesh reimagine the reclining female nude, a common subject in European art. Another 2011 collaboration between Leigh and artist Liz Magic Laser, titled Breakdown, features mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran singing a script the two artists compiled from fictional scenes of individuals experiencing nervous breakdowns, offering a stunning meditation on psychology, race, and gender.

Publication

A major scholarly monograph is forthcoming, including images of works in the exhibition, installation views from Leigh’s Venice presentation, and images of works from throughout her career, accompanies the exhibition. Serving as the first comprehensive scholarly publication on Leigh’s practice, the publication includes newly commissioned essays by over fifteen leading scholars, historians, and writers; a conversation between Simone Leigh, Lorraine O’Grady, and Malik Gaines; and an introduction by Eva Respini. The catalogue is designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti, and co-published by the ICA and DelMonico Books. The monograph will be available summer 2023.

Contributors to the publication include:
Vanessa Agard-Jones
Rizvana Bradley
Dionne Brand
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Malik Gaines
Saidiya V. Hartman
Daniella Rose King
Jessica Lynne
Nomaduma Masilela
Katherine McKittrick
Uri McMillan
Sequoia Miller
Steven Nelson
Tavia Nyong’o
Lorraine O’Grady
Rianna Jade Parker
Yasmina Price
Anni A. Pullagura
Eva Respini
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
Christina Sharpe 
Hortense J. Spillers

The publication is available for pre-order from the ICA Store; please click here to place your order.

Exhibition Credits

The U.S. Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia was co-commissioned by Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director, and Eva Respini, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Barbara Lee Chief Curator, at the ICA.

Simone Leigh is organized by Eva Respini, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Anni A. Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.

With warmest thanks, the ICA/Boston gratefully acknowledges the following philanthropic partners for their magnificent support.

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Major support is provided by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. 

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Lead corporate support is provided by eu2be.
 

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Generous support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Girlfriend Fund, and Wagner Foundation

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Leadership gifts are provided by Amy and David Abrams, Stephanie Formica Connaughton and John Connaughton, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Agnes Gund, Jodi and Hal Hess, Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Brigette Lau Collection, Henry Luce Foundation, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Gina and Stuart Peterson, Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Terra Foundation for American Art

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Essential support is also provided by Suzanne Deal Booth, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Richard Chang, Karen and Brian Conway, Steven Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Federico Martin Castro Debernardi, Jennifer Epstein and Bill Keravuori, Esta Gordon Epstein and Robert Epstein, Negin and Oliver Ewald, Alison and John Ferring, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, Peggy J. Koenig and Family, The Holly Peterson Foundation, David and Leslie Puth, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Leslie Riedel and Scott Friend, Mark and Marie Schwartz,  Kim Sinatra, Tobias and Kristin Welo, Lise and Jeffrey Wilks, Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth, Nicole Zatlyn and Jason Weiner, Jill and Nick Woodman, Marilyn Lyng and Dan O’Connell, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg Foundation, Kate and Ajay Agarwal, Eunhak Bae and Robert Kwak, Jeremiah Schneider Joseph, Barbara H. Lloyd, Cynthia and John Reed, and anonymous donors

(Boston, MA—March 29, 2023) Cicely Carew, Venetia Dale, and Yu-Wen Wu have been named the recipients of the 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, the museum announced today. Their exhibition at the ICA, on view August 24–January 2, will encompass a wide range of media—from sculpture and installation to time-based media and works on paper—examining how each of the Boston-area artists uniquely engages with the theme of states of change, the passage of time, and transformation. The 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition is organized by Anni A. Pullagura, curatorial assistant.

“Jim and Audrey Foster’s support of the exhibition and prize program have made it possible for the ICA to highlight some of the most exciting new art being made in Boston today, and we are ever thankful,” said Jill Medvedow, the Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “This cross-generational trio of artists brings a spectrum of perspectives to this year’s exhibition, and we look forward to sharing their vision with all our audiences.”
 

“We are pleased to congratulate the 2023 Foster Prize artists. Their unique perspectives will bring a dynamic energy to the galleries,” the Fosters added. “Their work illustrates the creativity and diversity of Boston’s artistic community today.”
 

This year’s selection of artists for the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition is informed by sustained and ongoing conversations with artists in Boston working through tenuous moments of social, political, and personal transition. The projects exhibited this year explore the idea of states of change, whether that refers to changes in personal or professional lives, the changing forces in our relational or ecological lives, or the very nature of materials undergoing transformation in the making of an artwork.

James and Audrey Foster endowed the prize and the exhibition to nurture and recognize exceptional Boston-area artists. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its new facility in 2006.
 

Artist Biographies

Cicely Carew (b. 1982 in Los Angeles) wields the formal, material, and sculptural aspects of painting to evoke feelings of radical joy, hope, and liberation. Her works explore the fleeting magic of the present through vibrant color, rebellious mark-making, sweeping gestures, and references to the terrestrial and cosmic worlds. In addition to group exhibitions and commissions by Now + There at the Prudential Center in Boston, she has had solo exhibitions at the Fitchburg Art Museum, The Commons in Provincetown, Northeastern University, and Simmons University. She is the recipient of the 2021 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, an Artful Seeds Fellowship, and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award. Her work is in the collections of Fidelity, Simmons University, Northeastern University, the Cambridge Arts Council, and the Federal Reserve of Boston. In addition to her studio practice, she is a wellness coach and educator as the 2021–22 Artist in Residence at Shady Hill School, teaching workshops for the New Art Center in Newton and screen printing for Lesley University. Carew earned a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a M.F.A. from Lesley University’s College of Art + Design, and resides with her son in Cambridge, MA.

Venetia Dale (b. 1981 in Winfield, IL) is an artist, mother, and educator living and working in Boston. Her sculptures—made of cast pewter, a malleable metal commonly found in historical kitchenware—and fiber artworks piece together fragments of mundane objects into new associations, drawing from food leftover from her children’s meals, to unfinished embroidery and hand-hooked rugs she sources online. She is interested in the material histories of embroidery and pewter in connection to the anonymous stewards who keep things clean, fixed, and loved. She re-contextualizes visible forms of care, growth, and change to evoke the intimacy and generative potential of domestic life. Dale has participated in group exhibitions at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (forthcoming), National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Villa Terrace Museum, and the Racine Art Museum, among others. Her work has been shown at 92nd Street Y Tribeca Gallery, Proof Gallery, and SOIL Gallery. She was the 2019 Polly Starr Thayer Visiting Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Prior, she was a resident artist at the Kohler Factory in 2013 and at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2010. Dale exhibits nationally and her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metal Museum in Tennessee, and the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin.

Yu-Wen Wu (born in Taipei, Taiwan) is a Boston-based interdisciplinary artist. Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork, which examines issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation, and the shape of identity in a new country. At the crossroads of art, science, politics, and social issues, her practice includes drawing, sculpture, site-specific video installations, community engaged practices, and public art. Wu recently exhibited Lantern Stories at Chin Park in Boston’s Chinatown, a widely acclaimed commission by the Greenway Conservancy in 2020 and reinstalled in 2022; a similar project commissioned for San Francisco Chinatown also opened permanently in 2022. Other large-scale commissioned works include The Poetry of Reason, a recent wall sculpture spanning two stories at the Joyce Cummings Center at Tufts University, and Terrain, a 38-foot-long sculptural drawing for the Chao Center at Harvard Business School. Wu’s recent exhibitions include DISPLACED: Contemporary Artists Confront the Global Refugee Crisis at SITE Santa Fe, NM in 2020; her solo exhibition Internal Navigations at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in 2021; and her presentation at Independent Art Fair 2022 recognized by New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz as one of “The Best New York Art Shows of 2022.” Wu is the recipient of the 2019 inaugural Prilla Smith Brackett Award and the 2021 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Her work is included in several public and private collections, including Harvard Art Museums, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Tufts University Art Galleries, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, and the Weisman Art Museum.
 

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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.

(Boston, MA—December 20, 2022) On February 16, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade—the first time this major new series of paintings have been shown together in a museum exhibition. Based in New York, María Berrío (born 1982 in Bogotá, Colombia) crafts her large-scale paintings through a unique and meticulous process of collaging torn pieces of Japanese paper on canvas. Using these thin layers of colorful paper like a palette of paint, she then applies watercolor to complete her riveting, magical scenes that speak to urgent real-world issues, including migration and the life experiences of women and children. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Senior Curator, María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade will be on view through August 6.

“Pressed by contemporary social and political realities, María locates her sources of inspiration in poetry, folklore, and the realms of magic to imagine alternative views of present-day truths, especially those faced by migrants, women, and children,” said Erickson. “Her large-scale works reflect on cross-cultural connections and global migration, and we’re honored the ICA is presenting her work in Boston for the first time.”

Energized by the contact point between reality and magic, Berrío frames her series as fictional stories, with each painting serving as a scene from an unfolding and otherworldly tale, accompanied by a descriptive text. She blends draftsmanship and drawing with meticulous collage and painting, creating a distinctive visual language for her narrative, figurative art.

This important series of new paintings—many created especially for this exhibition—blend the history of the thirteenth-century Children’s Crusade with the current mass migrations of peoples across the Mediterranean and the U.S. border. While the actual events of the Children’s Crusade continue to be a subject of debate among historians, legends of miracles and tragedies have inspired an abundance of stories, songs, and artwork over centuries.

Speaking about the new series, the artist says: “The main focus and the main characters are children and their perceptions as seen through fantasy and magical realism. As the children embark on this arduous journey, they infuse the ordinary with the mythic, as their innocent and imagined interpretation of the world bumps against stark realities. The darker and more bleak aspects of these travels are depicted through the naivete, humanity, love, and wonder of a child’s eyes.”

Berrío draws inspiration from diverse sources to reflect on the contemporary realities facing migrants and unaccompanied minors today. For example: Ozymandias (2022) is based on the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelly and shows a child (the artist’s son) lying on his back with eyes closed, tracing an arc in the sand; Under Thatch and Autumn Star (2022) is inspired by the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and depicts three children in bed who are left behind, and the troubled sleep that would haunt them; and Calvary (2022) is of children riding a carousel, a poignant symbol of the often-endless journey children experience during migration. Other forthcoming works reimagine the child migrant through such figures as birds and human-animal hybrids and meditate on issues of flight, freedom, control, and protection.

“As a storyteller, creating the character knowing this character doesn’t exist anywhere else but in the picture makes for a better story. I find it so much more interesting to create characters not knowing who they are entirely,” said Berrío. “Throughout my career, I’ve acknowledged the responsibility of making these works and the importance of a story. For me, the end result is when there is a moment of silence when you connect to the artwork and when you can feel something.”

Related Programming

Gallery Talk: María Berrío
Sunday, March 5, 2 pm
Free with museum admission
Join the artist and curator for a conversation about María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade.

About the Artist

María Berrío was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1982, and she completed her BFA at Parsons School of Design and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts, both New York, NY. The artist’s first survey María Berrío: Esperando mientras la noche florece (Waiting for the Night to Bloom) was on view at The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach from January until May 2021 and was accompanied by the artist’s first monograph. Her work has also been featured in numerous recent group exhibitions, including Women Painting Women, The Modern, Fort Worth (2022); Born in Flames: Feminist Futures, Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (2021); Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020, University Art Museum at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM (2020); Present Tense: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2019); and Prospect.4 Triennial, New Orleans (2017–2018). Berrío’s work is part of numerous permanent collections, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Dallas Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others.

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Boston-based Davis is the first artist to organize an exhibition from the ICA’s collection, including many objects never-before on view

(Boston, MA—December 14, 2022) On January 31, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens Taylor Davis Selects: Invisible Ground of Sympathy, the first time an artist has been invited to organize an exhibition based on the ICA’s permanent collection. Davis—whose work in sculpture, painting, and collage explores the relationship between object and viewer—carries forward her artistic ideas into the exhibition, which will include works by Lynda Benglis, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe and many others. Organized by Davis in collaboration with Jeffrey De Blois, ICA Associate Curator and Publications Manager, the exhibition will be on view through January 7, 2024.

“In nearly two decades, the ICA has established a strong and significant collection ranging from the historically important work of figures such as Eva Hesse and Ana Mendieta to the explorations of leading artists at work today including Zanele Muholi and Senga Nengudi,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Taylor will bring her sculptor’s perspective to our collection and I am excited to experience works from the collection in new and meaningful ways.”

A long-time and critically acclaimed member of the Boston arts community, Davis has taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design since 1999 and is on the faculty of Bard College. She is represented in the ICA’s collection with two works (Untitled, 2015; and Be Attentive, 2020) and is a member of the ICA’s Artist Advisory Council as well as a recipient of the 2001 ICA Artist Prize (forerunner of James and Audrey Foster Prize).

Davis has conceived of Invisible Ground of Sympathy as an open field in which constellations of artworks are assembled to activate their different emotional and psychological resonances. The exhibition’s title and thematic grounding are drawn from Chang Chung-yuan’s 1963 book Creativity and Taoism, in which sympathy is described as an unseen, but intuitive knowledge of the interfusion of all things.

Invisible Ground of Sympathy features key works from the ICA collection, such as Françoise Grossen’s Inchworm (1971), Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. Reverie–“B” Suite (1977), and Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #48 (1979), alongside recently acquired works on view for the first time, including Liz Larner’s ii (calefaction subduction) (2019), Ron Nagle’s Boston Scrambler (2015), and James Welling’s Inlet (1998). Davis has also brought together a selection of works from outside the collection and a group of objects by her frequent collaborators. Highlights include a newly commissioned poem from Fanny Howe, a suite of drawings by Conny Purtill, and seating made for the exhibition by Oliver Strand and Brandon Ndife.

“There is a storied history of artist-curated exhibitions, and artists offer a fresh lens and perspective on a museum’s permanent collection,” said De Blois. “Considering themes of precarity, wonder, violence, and beauty, Davis presents a personal take on how we make sense of the present, especially when there is no language to describe an experience in the moment. This exhibition, which is so deeply informed by Taylor’s artistic concerns, demonstrates how museum collections are not static, but are continually reimagined to tell different stories.”

About Taylor Davis

Davis received a Diploma of Fine Arts from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a B.S. in Education from Tufts University, and an M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. She has taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design since 1999 and has been co-chair of sculpture at Bard College since 2003. Davis’s work has been widely exhibited, including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the 2004 Whitney Biennial and recent presentations at the Austin Museum of Art, Texas; ICA/Boston; The Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT; and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA. Davis’s work is in the collections of Harvard Art Museums; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph of Leigh’s work

(Boston, MA—November 8, 2022) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the first museum survey exhibition of Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago), on view April 6–Sept. 4, 2023. Among the most respected artists of her generation, Leigh is representing the United States at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, in a project commissioned by the ICA. Works from the U.S. Pavilion will go on view in the United States for the first time as part of Leigh’s survey exhibition in Boston, which includes over 40 key examples of the artist’s ceramics, bronzes, videos, and installations, covering almost 20 years of highly disciplined production. Following its debut at the ICA, the exhibition Simone Leigh will tour to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (Nov. 2023-March 2024), and a joint presentation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and California African American Museum (CAAM), on view June 2024–Jan. 2025 in Los Angeles. Simone Leigh is organized by Eva Respini, ICA Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.

“Simone Leigh’s complex and profoundly moving work honors the agency and ideas of Black women, giving visibility to overlooked narratives and histories,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “We are thrilled to bring Simone Leigh’s art from Venice back to the U.S. as part of this important survey exhibition, so that audiences across the country have the chance to experience the work of this groundbreaking and influential artist.”

“Although this is the first survey dedicated to Leigh’s art, the work has always been there, and its impact and power can no longer be denied. Leigh’s drive to center Black women can be understood as in spite of and ahead of cultural and political realities, rather than in reaction to them,” said Respini. “Leigh’s art teaches us that time cannot be forced. Her work operates on its own terms, and she has created her own systems for her art, populated with collaborators, writers, and artists of her choosing, continually making room for others.”

Over the past two decades, Leigh has created works of art that situate questions of Black femme, or female-identified, subjectivity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Her sculpture, video, installation, and social practice explore ideas of race, beauty, and community in visual and material culture. Leigh’s art addresses a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and traditions, with specific references to vernacular and hand-made processes from across the African diaspora, as well as forms traditionally associated with African art and ritual, all while mining historical gaps, inaccuracies, and fallacies. Saidiya Hartman’s conception of “critical fabulation”—a strategy that invites historians, artists, and critics to creatively fill the gaps of history—provides a resonant framework for approaching Leigh’s work.

The ICA exhibition focuses on Leigh’s work in ceramic and bronze—beginning with early sculptural works and concluding with the new body of work created for the U.S. Pavilion in Venice—while also including key examples of works in video and installation to provide the full breadth of the artist’s practice. In Leigh’s ceramics, the artist draws on the vernacular traditions of the American South, Caribbean, and African continent, and challenges traditional hierarchies of art. Domestic vessels such as bowls and jugs, cowrie shells, and busts are recurring forms, and her readdress of these forms over time in various materials underscores the remarkable consistency of Leigh’s vision over two decades.

The exhibition opens with the impressively scaled trophallaxis (2008/2017), a suspended sculpture composed of clusters of black terracotta and porcelain forms that resemble fruit or breasts, from which a network of fully extended car antennas protrudes. The title adopts a scientific term describing the transfer of nourishment from insects’ bodies to the collective’s larvae, drawing associations of the femme body with fertility, nourishment, and labor—themes developed throughout the exhibition.  A subsequent gallery features a selection of Leigh’s table-top ceramic busts with their distinctive eyeless faces.

In recent large-scale ceramic sculptures, Leigh merges the human body with traditional domestic containers, conjuring unacknowledged acts of female labor. The intersection of architecture with the body is also central to her sculpture, such as the work Cupboard IX (2019), seen in the steel cage-like structures that the artist leaves bare or covered with raffia, evoking the womb, skirts, and sub-Saharan dwellings, often built by women and used as gathering spaces. 

Since 2018, the artist has cast her sculptural works in bronze, creating statuary for both gallery presentations and public art commissions. Her bronzes combine figuration with domestic or architectural elements, such as in the 2019 sculpture Jug, featuring the head and torso of a woman’s body atop a large-scale vessel or jug.  Through their material choices, these bronzes embody a state of permanence and grandeur, and thus enter the dialogue around monuments in cultural memory. Leigh’s bronzes, with their overtly feminist and Black figurative references, also insist on the centrality—indeed, the necessity—of considering the agency of Black women as subjects in the cultural sphere.  The exhibition will feature Leigh’s monumental 24-foot-tall bronze Satellite (2022), sited outside around the ICA campus for visitors to encounter in the landscape, as a beacon for the exhibition, broadcasting ideas around self-determination that is endemic to the work.

Leigh’s video works, often created in collaboration with other artists, draw from historical and fictional representations of Black women and femmes. In the video my dreams, my works must wait till after hell (2011), Leigh and artist Chitra Ganesh reimagine the reclining female nude, a common subject in European art, from their perspective as women of color. A 2011 collaboration between Leigh and artist Liz Magic Laser, titled Breakdown, features mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran singing a script the two artists compiled from scenes of men and women experiencing nervous breakdowns in plays or television shows, offering a stunning meditation on psychology, race, and gender.

Occupying the final four galleries of the exhibition, the body of work Leigh created for the U.S. Pavilion continues her explorations around the effect and legacy of colonialism and notions of self-determination. Featuring interrelated sculptures in ceramic, bronze, and raffia—as well as a video, Conspiracy (2022), made in collaboration with Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich—these galleries will evoke the layout of the Venice exhibition, providing U.S. audiences the opportunity to experience this landmark installation. The exhibition concludes with Last Garment (2022), a bronze based on a 19th-century souvenir photograph of a Jamaican laundress, and explores ideas of labor, specifically the invisible labor of Black women. This sculpture is placed in a large reflecting pool situated within the sightline of Boston Harbor, as the breathtaking final gallery of the exhibition.

Publication

A major scholarly catalogue, including images of all the works in the exhibition as well as installation views from Leigh’s Venice presentation, accompanies the exhibition. Serving as the first comprehensive scholarly publication on Leigh’s work, the publication includes newly commissioned essays by over fifteen leading scholars, historians, and writers; writing by Simone Leigh; and an introduction by Eva Respini. The catalogue is designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti, and co-published by the ICA and DelMonico Books. Contributors to the publication include:

Vanessa Agard-Jones
Rizvana Bradley
Dionne Brand
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Malik Gaines
Saidiya V. Hartman
Daniella Rose King
Jessica Lynne
Nomaduma Masilela
Katherine McKittrick
Uri McMillan
Sequoia Miller
Steven Nelson
Tavia Nyong’o
Lorraine O’Grady
Rianna Jade Parker
Yasmina Price
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
Christina Sharpe 
Hortense J. Spillers

Exhibition Credits

Simone Leigh is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant. 

With warmest thanks, the ICA/Boston gratefully acknowledges the following philanthropic partners for their magnificent support.
 

Ford Foundation logo

Mellon Foundation logo

Major support is provided by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. 
 

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Lead corporate support is provided by eu2be.

 

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Generous support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Girlfriend Fund, and Wagner Foundation
 

 

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Leadership gifts are provided by Amy and David Abrams, Stephanie Formica Connaughton and John Connaughton, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Agnes Gund, Jodi and Hal Hess, Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Brigette Lau Collection, Henry Luce Foundation, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Gina and Stuart Peterson, Helen and Charles Schwab, and Terra Foundation for American Art

 

Helen Frankenthaler Foundation logo

Essential support is also provided by Suzanne Deal Booth, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Richard Chang, Karen and Brian Conway, Steven Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Federico Martin Castro Debernardi, Jennifer Epstein and Bill Keravuori, Esta Gordon Epstein and Robert Epstein, Negin and Oliver Ewald, Alison and John Ferring, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, Peggy J. Koenig and Family, The Holly Peterson Foundation, David and Leslie Puth with Mark and Marie Schwartz, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Leslie Riedel and Scott Friend, Kim Sinatra, Tobias and Kristin Welo, Lise and Jeffrey Wilks, Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth, Nicole Zatlyn and Jason Weiner, Jill and Nick Woodman, Marilyn Lyng and Dan O’Connell, Kate and Ajay Agarwal, Eunhak Bae and Robert Kwak, Jeremiah Schneider Joseph, Barbara H. Lloyd, Cynthia and John Reed, and Anonymous donors

Additional support for the publication is provided by the Fotene Demoulas Fund for Curatorial Research and Publications.

(Boston, MA—September 20, 2022) On November 3, 2022, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will debut a new, site-specific commission by Barbara Kruger (b. 1945 in Newark, NJ). For over 40 years, Kruger has been a consistent, critical observer of contemporary culture. Her distinct visual language uses bold textual statements and images taken from mass media to create significant artworks that investigate ideas of power, identity, consumerism, and gender. At the ICA, Kruger will transform the first-floor lobby’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall into a monumental, thought-provoking installation that comments on the key issues of our era while reimagining one of her most iconic images. The riveting new work, Untitled (Hope/Fear), 2022, will be on view through January 21, 2024, in a presentation organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Senior Curator.

“Barbara Kruger creates some of the most powerful artworks of our time, using her distinct combination of text, scale, and design to chart a journey from familiarity to eye-popping awareness. At the ICA, all visitors will encounter her monumental installation in our glass-enclosed lobby, a free and open public space,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.

“The ICA installation draws on Kruger’s decades-long practice of creating large-scale installations of her text-based art, transforming spaces with her signature aesthetic and pointed content. Continuing in this vein, her brand-new work for the ICA will speak, as her work has done for many years, to issues of war, women’s rights, and power, and ultimately to question authority,” said Erickson.

In the early 1980s, Kruger perfected a signature style of words and images extracted from mass media and recomposed into memorable, graphic artworks. In this new commission for the ICA, Untitled (Hope/Fear), 2022, Kruger uses the wall’s unique architecture to create a bold work featuring three distinct areas of text and image combinations. The largest text—”Another hope, Another fear”—in Futura bold (the artist’s typeface of choice) exemplifies Kruger’s incisive ability to evoke the emotional tenor of our time, a parade of daily hopes and fears fueled by an unceasing newsreel and media feeds. By repeating and replacing words, Kruger creates a cadence of text that cascades across the wall. Another area of the installation displays phrases in graphic black-and-white bands that repeat the word “war”—“War time, war crime, war game”—before turning into the phrase “War for a world without women.” The effect of these phrases pivoting around “war” is to reveal the interrelationships or power. In the concluding phrase “War for me to become you,” Kruger has crossed out the pronouns, confounding clear notions of who is speaking and resisting any univocal position.

The final element restages the text from one of Kruger’s best-known works, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989, which she originally produced as a poster for the women’s march in Washington, D.C. to protest new laws limiting women’s access to healthcare. In this 2022 version, she changes both image and font, overlaying text on top of a black-and-white photograph of a face. Untitled (Hope/Fear), 2022, reflects Kruger’s signature style while revealing her breathless and ongoing innovation of text and image. This newest work confirms Kruger’s status as one of the sharpest respondents to contemporary culture.

The ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is dedicated to site-specific, commissioned works by leading contemporary artists. Located within the museum’s glass-enclosed lobby, the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is the visitor’s first encounter with art upon entering the building.

Retail

The ICA Store has collaborated with Kruger to develop exclusive merchandise including a t-shirt, tank top, and tote bag featuring the “Your body is a battleground” motif from the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. Available only at the ICA. More details will be available soon on icastore.org.

Media and visitors are encouraged to use #BarbaraKruger in their social media posts.

About the artist

Kruger lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY. She studied at Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design, New York. Solo shows include Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2022), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2022), The Art Institute of Chicago (2021), AMOREPACIFIC Museum of Art, Seoul (2019), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2016), High Line Art, New York (2016), Modern Art Oxford (2014), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2013), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2010), Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2005), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1999), Serpentine Gallery, London (1994), Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal (1985) and Kunsthalle Basel (1984). Group shows include those at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2021), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018), V-A-C Foundation, Palazzo delle Zattere, Venice (2017), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014), Biennale of Sydney (2014), Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2013), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010, 2009, 2007), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2006), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2004), Tate Liverpool (2002), Centre Pompidou, Paris (1988) and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1987). Her is also currently on view in The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2022), curated by Cecilia Alemani.

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 expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of 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 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 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

(Boston, MA—Aug 26, 2022) Member tickets are now available for the ICA’s new performance season. Highlights include Liz Gerring, Jason Moran + Alicia Hall Moran, Bill T. Jones, Okwui Okpokwasili, and much more!

Fri, Sep 30 | 8 PM
L’Rain
$17 ICA members + students / $22 general admission
Brooklyn-born-and-based musician, experimentalist, and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, aka L’Rain, blends genres including gospel, jazz, and neo-soul with an array of keyboards, synths, and hauntingly delicate vocals.

Fri, Oct 21 + Sat, Oct 22 | 8 PM
Liz Gerring Dance Company with the JACK Quartet: Harbor
$20 ICA members + students / $30 general admission
Liz Gerring Dance Company debuts “Harbor,” a world-premiere performance combining movement, poetic illumination, and a newly commissioned string quartet by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Luther Adams performed by JACK Quartet.  

Fri, Nov 18 + Sat, Nov 19 | 8 PM
Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran: Family Ball
$25 ICA members + students / $35 general admission
This world premiere performance by pianist and composer Jason Moran and mezzo-soprano and composer Alicia Hall Moran scrutinizes the intricacy of human partnership, presenting it in raw form through music and song. 

Fri, Feb 10, 2023 | 8 PM 
Suzanne Bocanegra: Honor
$15 ICA members + students / $25 general admission
This performance by conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra masquerades as an artist talk but reveals Bocanegra’s current fixation with one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s greatest tapestries. Honor features celebrated film and theater actor Lili Taylor in the title role of “The Artist.”

Fri, Feb 24, 2023 | 8 PM
HYENA
$15 ICA members + students / $25 general admission
Composer Georg Friedrich Haas’s HYENA features a remarkable score accompanying the autobiographical story of Haas’s wife, the writer Mollena Lee Williams-Haas. Williams-Haas narrates, with music by Boston’s Sound Icon Ensemble led by Jeffrey Means. 

Fri, Mar 10 + Sat, Mar 11, 2023 | 8 PM
Sun, Mar 12, 2023 | 2 PM
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: Curriculum II
$30 ICA members + students / $40 general admission
A timely new work by Tony-winning Bill T. Jones, choreographed with Janet Wong and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Curriculum II explores the historical and persistent connection between race and technology and the pursuit of what is human. 

Fri, Apr 21 + Sat, Apr 22, 2023 | 8 PM
Sam Green: 32 Sounds
$15 ICA members + students / $25 general admission
This immersive documentary from filmmaker Sam Green explores the elemental phenomenon of sound, performed in its “live cinema” form, featuring live narration by Sam Green and live original music by JD Samson.

Fri, May 12 + Sat, May 13, 2023 | 8 PM
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born
$20 ICA members + students / $30 general admission
Keep an eye out for more information on this world premiere from a team of “Bessie” Award winners: writer, performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, and director, designer and filmmaker Peter Born. 

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

The ICA is supported in part by grants from the Barr Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Mellon Foundation, the Mass Cultural Council, and the Reopen Creative Boston fund, administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture.

Logos for the Barr Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mellon Foundation, Mass Cultural Council, and the Boston City Mayor's Office of Arts and CultureSupport for FAMILY BALL is generously provided by Kathleen McDonough & Edward Berman. 

Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra, was commissioned in part by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, which also hosted a creative development residency in November 2019.

This performance of HYENA is a coproduction of the Boston University Center for New Music and the ICA/Boston. 

Support for the ICA’s presentation of Curriculum II is generously provided by Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest and The David Henry Fund for Performance.

Curriculum II is commissioned and produced by New York Live Arts with commissioning support from Peak Performances at Montclair State University (MSU) and the American Dance Festival. Curriculum II premiered with Peak Performances at MSU in June 2022.

32 Sounds is commissioned by Stanford Live, Stanford University; The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi; Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology; Green Music Center of Sonoma State University; Arizona Arts Live at University of Arizona; and developed through a creative residency at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts. 

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Support for the upcoming Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born premiere is generously provided by Leslie Riedel and Scott Friend.