Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, Static Drift, 2001. Chromogenic color prints, Two parts, each 29 1/2 × 44 inches (74.9 × 111.8 cm). Promised gift of Isabel Stainow Wilcox, in honor of her grandfather Thomas Metcalf, trustee of the museum (1936–1946) © Ingrid Mwangi Hutter
Lorna Simpson, ID, 1990. Gelatin silver prints and plastic plaques, Two parts, each 49 x 84 inches (124.5 x 213.4 cm). Gift of Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women. Courtesy Salon 94, New York. © Lorna Simpson
Joe Wardwell, If You Got the Money Honey, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 54 × 72 inches (137.2 × 182.9 cm). Gift of Mathieu O. Gaulin ©️ Joe Wardwell
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Wordplay, a new collection exhibition exploring a defining aspect of contemporary art: the role of text in visual expression. Since the emergence of conceptual art in the 1960s, artists have used “text art” to probe philosophical questions, express and subvert political messages, challenge notions of identity, and connect their artwork to multiple references, writers, and cultural icons. Wordplay features 35 works—including several recent acquisitions on view for the first time—by artists such as Kenturah Davis, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Joe Wardwell, alongside signature works by Renée Green, Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, Zanele Muholi, and Lorna Simpson, among others. The exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Erika Umali, the ICA’s first Curator of Collections, and will be on view from Jan. 30 through Dec. 1, 2024.
“Since the ICA began collecting in 2006, we have built a forward-thinking, 20th and 21st-century collection, distinguished by its representation of women artists and commitment to diversity,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Wordplay is an exciting presentation of the many ways that artists use text and language to convey ideas, promote interactivity, and create symbols, composition, color and form.
“The term ‘Wordplay’, or a play on words, references the witty use of words and their meanings, bringing attention to language as a subject of a text,” said curators Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Erika Umali, Curator of Collections. “Likewise, the artists featured in Wordplay use text and language in creative ways that heighten our awareness of modes of communication and the acts of seeing and reading.”
Wordplay draws primarily from the ICA’s permanent collection to showcase how contemporary artists have played with words to animate and expand their art practices. The exhibition will debut a number of recent acquisitions including:
— Collen Mfazwe, August House, Johannesburg (2012) by South African artist and visual activist Zanele Muholi. This photograph is part of Muholi’s Faces and Phases series archiving new horizons in queer self-representation. In each photograph the sitters choose their posture, setting, and dress inviting viewers to, as Muholi says, “contemplate questions such as: What does an African lesbian look like? Is there a lesbian aesthetic or do we express our gendered, racialized and classed selves in rich and diverse ways?” In this work, a sash reading “Princess” sits across the chest of the sitter.
— If You Got the Money Honey (2021) by Boston-based artist Joe Wardwell. This painting is Wardwell’s first cityscape, presenting a view of downtown Boston from Wardwell’s Dorchester studio. Created in response to the impending demolition of his studio and Boston’s increasingly unaffordable housing, the artist layers text ranging from lyrics from the Guns N’ Roses song that gives the work its title, to quotations sourced from cultural figures with ties to Massachusetts, including Malcolm X, Buckminster Fuller, and Donna Summer. This matrix of text and landscape evokes the collective and polyphonic voice of an urban environment.
— Static Drift (2001) by biracial artist Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, born in Kenya to an African father and a European mother. To create this diptych, Ingrid Mwangi Hutter applied stencils to her own abdomen and allowed the sun to burn her skin, leaving parts under and overexposed on her body. One photograph shows the map of Germany outlined in darker brown with words “burn out country,” and the other shows a map of the continent of Africa in lighter brown with the words “bright dark continent.” The artist creates a literal map on her body, visualizing her experience as a biracial woman living in both Kenya and Germany—perceived as white in Africa and Black in Germany—using color, geographical shapes, and language on her own body.
— Zé Carioca e amigos (Um festival embananado)/Joe Carioca and Friends (The Festival Went Bananas) (2005) by São Paulo-based artist Rivane Neuenschwander. This interactive installation references a famous Brazilian comic strip featuring the character José “Zé” Carioca, a dapper Brazilian parrot first created in 1941 by cartoonist José Carlos de Brito. Neuenschwander strips the comic of its original text and image, leaving only vibrant, technicolor squares and blank speech bubbles on the wall. The artist invites the public to continue the artwork by writing or drawing in the mural blocks, resulting in a collective form of spontaneous social and individual expression.
This collection exhibition features works by 16 artists: Jennifer Bartlett, Kenturah Davis, Taylor Davis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Shepard Fairey, Renée Green, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Ingrid Mwangi Hutter, Guadalupe Maravilla, Zanele Muholi, Rivane Neuenschwander, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Travares Strachan, and Joe Wardwell.
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
Igshaan Adams, Bonteheuwel / Epping, 2021. Wood, painted wood, plastic, bone, stone and glass beads, seashells, polyester and nylon rope, cotton rope, link chain, wire (memory and galvanized steel), cotton twine, 194.88 x 460.63 x 127.95″ / 495 x 1170 x 325cm. Photo by Mario Todeschini. Courtesy of the artist.
Igshaan Adams, Samesyn, 2023. Installation view 35th Bienal de São Paulo – choreographies of the impossible. Photo by Levi Fanan. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan.
(Boston, MA–Nov. 14, 2023) On February 13, 2024, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) unveils a monumental, site-specific commission by multidisciplinary artist Igshaan Adams (born 1982 in Cape Town, South Africa). Adams’s woven tapestries point to the interconnectedness of the artist’s spirituality, familial histories, and local community narratives as rooted in his South African heritage. The ambitious new work, entitled Lynloop [Toeing the Line], will be on view from February 13, 2024, to February 15, 2025, in a presentation organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs.
Drawing on the notion of “desire lines”—paths created by pedestrians over time that fall outside of sanctioned walkways—Adams visualizes the everyday movements of people through a range of tactile materials to contest fixed boundaries. At the ICA, Adams will transform the first-floor lobby’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall into a multi-part, experimental weaving and sculptural installation conceived in response to the museum’s architecture and the artist’s recollections of post-apartheid South Africa.
“Igshaan Adams brings a distinct, new voice to the ICA, combining monumentality, tactility and cosmology with a unique combination of materials and techniques, to represent histories of an apartheid and post-apartheid era in South Africa,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “Visitors will encounter this stunning new work as they enter the museum’s first floor lobby, a free and open space for the public.”
“Adams’s installation at the ICA considers the impact of childhood experiences and memories on the trajectory of one’s life,” said Erickson. “He takes maps of areas where enforced boundaries, such as those formerly used to separate communities along racial castes during the apartheid era, and reframes them with his own observations and fantasies. In this work, pathways between sports fields adjacent to where the artist grew up are softened with hues of pink, mohair, and delicate gold chain.”
Adams uses aerial images from Google Earth as the basis for his intricate, monumental weavings. In his commission at the ICA, Lynloop, he reproduces the footpaths between a sports field and a walled-off recreational space in Heideveld, a town in Cape Town, South Africa, adjacent to Bonteheuwel, the artist’s hometown. Lynloop is an Afrikaans term formerly used by South African gangs to denote control, or to punish those who stepped out of line. Adams reimagines a “hyper-masculine” territory of his childhood and associated memories to consider both the imprint of early experiences and the potential of other futures. In dialogue with the extensive weavings are enormous suspended metallic, cloud-like sculptures that suggest concentrated areas of movement and human interaction. The artist describes his new work as “a yearning for the beauty and fantasy of what could have been if my environment had allowed for it – forcing a wish onto a memory.”
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 and has featured commissions by Barbara Kruger, Wangechi Mutu, Matthew Ritchie, Gillian Wearing, and Haegue Yang.
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
Igshaan Adams, Bonteheuwel / Epping, 2021, Wood, painted wood, plastic, bone, stone and glass beads, seashells, polyester and nylon rope, cotton rope, link chain, wire (memory and galvanized steel), cotton twine, 194.88 x 460.63 x 127.95″ / 495 x 1170 x 325cm. Photo: Mario Todeschini, Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan.
Igshaan Adams, Samesyn, 2023. Installation view 35th Bienal de São Paulo – choreographies of the impossible. Photo by Levi Fanan. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan.
Photo by Liza Voll.
(Boston, MA—Oct. 25, 2023) Steven D. Corkin and Charlotte Wagner, Co-Chair and President of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), announced today that longtime director Jill Medvedow will step down from her position in December 2024. Over her 25-year tenure as Ellen Matilda Poss Director, Medvedow has led the transformation of the ICA from a small, non-collecting kunsthalle to a major contemporary art museum, a national leader in teen arts education, and a pioneering advocate for the role of art in civic life.
In a statement on behalf of the ICA’s Board of Trustees, Corkin and Wagner said, “Jill transformed the ICA into an anchor institution in Boston, and one of the leading centers for artistic experimentation and contemporary culture in the country. Working with staff, artists, teachers, students, and community partners, she has integrated new art and ideas into the heart of our communities, bridged the connection between contemporary art and civic life, and in doing so, forever changed the landscape for contemporary art and culture in the city of Boston. We are profoundly grateful to Jill for her inspired leadership, her commitment and dedication, and her unwavering mission to expand access to art for all.”
“I love the ICA; I love its people and programs, and I am excited for all of us as we move forward,” said Medvedow.
In 1998, when Medvedow was hired, the ICA was located in a former police station. Medvedow sparked a renaissance for contemporary art in Boston when, in 2006, she opened the city’s first new art museum in nearly a century. The first U.S. commission of architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the ICA today is an architectural icon. The museum now encompasses a waterfront campus including the building in the Seaport, the ICA Watershed—a free, industrial space across Boston Harbor for immersive art and community engagement—and Seaport Studio, a dedicated space for teen arts programs.
Under Medvedow’s leadership, annual attendance at the ICA has grown more than 1,000%, to more than 300,000 today. Through major campaigns, Medvedow has raised more than $200 million to build the new ICA and the ICA Watershed and to improve financial strength and resiliency for generations to come.
Medvedow has been a leader in nurturing artistic experimentation, championing new artists and new ideas and amplifying artists’ voices, additionally establishing the museum’s first Artist Advisory Council to ensure that the ideas and needs of artists are central to institutional planning. During the course of her directorship, the ICA has presented more than 250 exhibitions, including groundbreaking thematic exhibitions such as Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957; Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present; Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today; When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art; and To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood as well as important single-artist exhibitions by Cornelia Parker, Tara Donovan, Shepard Fairey, Nick Cave, Doris Salcedo, Ragnar Kjartansson, Arlene Shechet, Amy Sillman, Jeffrey Gibson, Yayoi Kusama, Huma Bhabha, Deana Lawson, and Simone Leigh, among many others. Watershed presentations include commissions from John Akomfrah, Firelei Báez, and Guadalupe Maravilla.
In the performing arts, the ICA has been a vibrant presenter of new work, including recent commissions by Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Liz Gerring. Medvedow was the co-commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale with a historic presentation of Simone Leigh.
Medvedow transformed the ICA into a collecting museum—including the acquisition of The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women—bringing to the fore diverse artistic voices and artists who have been historically underrepresented. Today it is one of the only art museum collections with almost 60% of works by artists who identify as women and 38% who identify as people of color. Equally notable, Medvedow is a national champion for teen arts programs and the role museums can play in the lives of teens and their city. In 2012, the ICA’s teen initiative was recognized with a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award from the White House, the highest honor of its kind. Today an average of 6,000 teens a year participate in ICA programs and national convenings.
Throughout her career, Medvedow has been equally passionate about contemporary art and civic life, from her leadership on after- and out-of-school equity for children; early work with City Year developing a survey on attitudes and behaviors of young people on the arts; and championing temporary public art projects in unexpected locations since the early 1980s. A member and former trustee of the American Association of Museum Directors, she led efforts for paid internships at art museums, changing a longstanding tradition in the field. Medvedow’s commitment to enriching the lives of young people extends to her personal creativity as well; she recently authored a children’s book titled Kangamoo!, donating hundreds of copies to early education programs in Boston. She served on Governor Deval Patrick’s Creative Economy Transition Team in 2008 and more recently on the arts policy transition group for Governor Maura Healy. In 2022, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Medvedow is currently a Trustee of Boston After School and Beyond and serves on the Boston Public Schools Arts Expansion Arts Advisory Board. In 2023 she began as a fellow at the Harvard Divinity School, exploring art’s expanded role in community. She is a passionate speaker about art, healing, and social change.
Media contact:
ICA: Colette Randall, crandall@icaboston.org, 617-318-8271
Wu Tsang, Of Whales, 2022. Installation view, The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin. Photo by Matteo De Fina. © Wu Tsang
(Boston, MA—OCT. 11, 2023) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Wu Tsang: Of Whales, an immersive video installation inspired by Herman Melville’s classic 1851 American novel Moby Dick; or, The Whale.
In Of Whales, Wu Tsang (b. 1982, Worcester, Massachusetts) reimagines the story of Moby Dick from the perspective of the sperm whale, inviting viewers on a mesmerizing journey through the depths of a CGI ocean, only surfacing for the occasional breath of air. Created on the Unity gaming platform, the dynamically generated real-time video installation loops continuously and offers audiences a multisensorial experience of undersea life that transforms with each viewing. The exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Tessa Bachi Haas, Curatorial Assistant, and will be on view Feb. 15 through Aug. 4, 2024.
Of Whales (2022) is part of a filmic trilogy derived from Tsang’s multidisciplinary research around Moby Dick; or, The Whale. An artist whose practice frequently centers on reinventing cinematic language and narrative, Tsang approaches the novel through a decolonial lens, channeling perspectives of the whale and the ‘motley crew’ aboard the whaling ship to evoke non- and inter-human sociality, as well as environmental themes and queer intimacies.
As collaboration is central to Tsang’s practice, she often works with a variety of artists, scholars, and performers on a single project. In Of Whales, the endless expanse of ocean life is accompanied by a multi-channel, layered soundscape that fills the entire gallery. The musical score, composed by Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda, and performed by Tapiwa Svosve, Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, Miao Zhao, and Ahya Simone, blends saxophone, trumpet, bass clarinet, harp, and vocals to accompany the audience’s surreal adventure into the unknown depths of the sea.
“Wu Tsang is one of the most significant video artists working today, and her epic commission Of Whales was an important highlight of the 2022 Venice Biennale. We are thrilled to share this mesmerizing installation with our audiences. Overlooking the Boston Harbor, the ICA is a poignant location to view the work with its references to maritime culture and New England’s whaling history – as well as the artist’s personal connection with Massachusetts,” said Erickson and Haas.
Wu Tsang will be at the ICA on February 15 for an Artist’s Voice conversation with Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Ruth Erickson.
Artist Biography
Wu Tsang (born 1982 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who combines narrative and documentary techniques to explore fluid identities, marginalized histories, and whimsical worlds. Tsang received her MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other films by Tsang include We hold where study (2017), Girl Talk (2015), Damelo Todo (Gimme Everything) (2010), and Shape of a Right Statement (2008). Tsang’s work was included in the ICA/Boston’s acclaimed Art in the Age of the Internet: 1989 to Today (2018) and has been exhibited or screened at La Biennale de Venezia, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern London, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among many other national and international venues.
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
