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The artist’s first solo exhibition in Boston features a selection of intricate embroidered and mixed media works that explore ideas of home, land, and memory 

(Boston, MA—July 13, 2022) On August 11, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens Jordan Nassar: Fantasy and Truth, a solo exhibition of the New York-based artist whose multifaceted practice draws on traditional Palestinian craft to investigate ideas of home, land, and memory. As a self-taught artist, Nassar (b. 1985 in New York) is mostly known for his use of Palestinian tatreez, a matrilineal tradition of cross-stitching. In collaboration with a Palestinian embroidery collective based in the West Bank, the artist composes his embroideries from numerous individually made panels that together weave breathtaking, layered panoramas suggestive of an expansive sky or a boundless horizon. Fantasy and Truth presents the artist’s largest embroidered panels to date, alongside recent work in wood and glass mixed media. Organized by Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, the exhibition is on view August 11, 2022 through January 29, 2023. 

“Nassar’s work, with its complex patterning and painterly attention to form and color, elevates our understanding of craft traditions as long-standing and deeply meaningful forms of art. We look forward to sharing his work with audiences in Boston for the first time,” said Pullagura. 

Tatreez is a tradition deeply rooted in the history and culture of Palestine. Since 1948, it has become closely tied to ideas of nostalgia, nationality, and heritage. Colors, patterns, and designs could distinguish a wearer both by where they were from as well as their social or familial status, or signal different stages of life. Nassar grew up with many of these motifs in his household, and began incorporating tatreez into his practice after meeting with women-led embroidery collectives in Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem, with whom he now collaborates on some of his artworks. 

Presented across the gallery space, the embroidered works offer visions of homelands at monumental scale. Nassar’s largest works to date—Song of the Flowers (2022) and Lament of the Field (2022)—are each composed of fifty-seven individual panels in richly varied warm and cool colors, introducing familiar motifs and patterns in an arrangement that together suggests a sun rising over a blue mountain or a moon shining across a red valley. Recalling the fragmentation of memory, time, history, and place, the panels individual language and collective dialogue offer a poetic remark on ideas of fantasy and truth. The exhibition title, as well as the titles of the two large-scale embroideries, draw from the poetry collection A Tear and A Smile (1914) by Lebanese writer Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), whose melancholic poetics address the ebb and flow of memory and history. Similarly, for Nassar, embroidery holds a tension between conflict and harmony in the relationship between stitch and thread, color and pattern. 

“I like to discuss these landscapes as versions of Palestine as they exist in the minds of the diaspora, who have never been there and can never go there,” shares Nassar. “They are the Palestine I heard stories about growing up, half-made of imagination. They are dreamlands and utopias that are colorful and fantastical—beautiful and romantic, but bittersweet.” 

In recent years, Nassar has expanded his practice to include glass and wood-based crafts. The ICA exhibition features glassworks in which the artist has arranged hand-flamed glass beads in a steel armature, similar to decorative latticework. In the wood pieces on display, Nassar has layered the natural grains of the wood with brass and mother of pearl to create richly inlaid surfaces; these designs recur in the artist-made benches also created for this exhibition. 

Retail 

The ICA Store has partnered with Nassar and his clothing brand Adish to develop an exclusive capsule collection available only at the ICA featuring a limited edition embroidered hooded sweatshirt, tote bag, poster, and more. Visit icastore.org for more information. 

Artist biography 

Jordan Nassar (b.1985, New York, NY) earned his B.A. at Middlebury College in 2007. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions globally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Asia Society, New York, NY; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY; Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Tel Aviv; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; James Cohan, New York and The Third Line, Dubai, UAE. His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art, Florida; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Museum of Contemporary Art, California; and Rhode Island School of Design Museum, in Rhode Island, 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.

Support for Jordan Nassar: Fantasy and Truth is generously provided by Oliver and Negin Ewald. 

(Boston, MA—June 29, 2022)—The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston announces the promotion of Eva Respini to Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Barbara Lee Chief Curator. Respini will lead the vision and strategy for the ICA’s exhibitions and collection, in alignment with the ICA’s mission to provide a wider and more global view of today’s most innovative artists and contemporary art practices. Respini joined the ICA as the Barbara Lee Chief Curator in 2015, after more than a decade as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Most recently, she was the curator and co-commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion’s historic Simone Leigh presentation for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. Respini is currently organizing the first mid-career survey exhibition of Leigh’s work, which will open at the ICA in March 2023 before touring across the country.

“I am thrilled to announce Eva’s promotion to this expanded leadership position at the ICA,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “With creativity, thoughtfulness, and dedication, Eva has developed exhibitions that have advanced our knowledge of contemporary art and artists, and been met with popular and critical acclaim. Hundreds of thousands of people—in Boston, New York, and Venice—are currently experiencing exhibitions developed by Eva and her team, expanding the impact of the ICA on a local, national, and global stage.”

Respini led the significant expansion of ICA’s exhibition program in 2018 with the opening of the ICA Watershed, the museum’s project space in East Boston where audiences encounter and experience large-scale and immersive artworks. In keeping with ICA’s history to champion the most innovative art and ideas of our time, her work has brought attention to under-recognized artists or little-explored themes and practices in the art world. Specializing in global contemporary art and image-making practices, Respini has organized the critically acclaimed exhibitions Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today (2018); When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art (2019); and ambitious solo presentations such as Deana Lawson (2021); Firelei Báez (2021); John Akomfrah: Purple (2019); Huma Bhabha: They Live (2019); William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects (2018); Liz Deschenes (2016); and Nalini Malani (2016). Her other notable exhibitions include a major retrospective of Cindy Sherman (2012), and the surveys Walid Raad (2015) and Robert Heinecken (2014). Respini’s curatorial leadership and commitment to curatorial craft at every level of exhibition-making is evident in all her curatorial projects. Respini has been a visiting lecturer, critic, and speaker at a number of universities and currently teaches a seminar on curatorial practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Other universities where she has taught and lectured include School of Visual Arts, Columbia University; Yale University’s School of Art; and the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has published numerous books and catalogues and her writing appears in museum publications and periodicals.

About the ICA/Boston 
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 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.   

Media contact: Colette Randall, crandall@icaboston.org

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The Convening Will Bring Together Black Women  Thinkers, Performers, Writers, and Artists from Around the World  

October 7-9 at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy  

(Boston, MA—June 22, 2022)—The U.S. Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia expands its presentation of artist Simone Leigh’s work this fall with Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a convening of Black women intellectuals—performers, writers, filmmakers  artists, and activists—that will take place Oct. 7-9 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The project is an extension of the critically acclaimed exhibition Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and reflects the collaborative ethos that is characteristic of artist Simone Leigh’s practice.   
 
The three-day symposium is organized by Rashida Bumbray, director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations, with curatorial advisors Saidiya Hartman, University Professor, Columbia University, and Tina M. Campt, Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media, Brown University. For more information, visit simoneleighvenice2022.org.   
 
Loophole of Retreat: Venice builds on an eponymous one-day convening held in 2019 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The conceptual frame is drawn from the 1861 autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a formerly enslaved woman who, for seven years after her escape, lived in a crawlspace she described as a “loophole of retreat.” Jacobs claimed this site as simultaneously an enclosure and a space for enacting practices of freedom—practices of thinking, planning, writing, and imagining new forms of freedom.  
 
“Leigh is committed to the lineage of Black women artists and intellectuals that make her practice possible. As such, in connection with her exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion in Venice, she continues her work of making Black women’s intellectual labor more visible. Loophole of Retreat will elevate a global conversation on Black feminist thought in order to nurture the intergenerational and interdisciplinary connections between Black women thinkers and makers,” said Bumbray.   
 
Loophole of Retreat: Venice will feature a global roster of participants that includes visual artist Deborah Anzinger (Jamaica); cultural anthropologist, dancer, and choreographer Aimee Meredith Cox (U.S.); filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich (U.S.); filmmaker Gessica Geneus (Haiti); visual artist Bouchra Khalili (Morocco); poet Raquel Lima (Portugal); choreographer Paloma McGregor (St. Croix /U.S.), multidisciplinary collective Black Quantum Futurism (U.S.); choreographer Kettly Noël (Haiti/Mali), medical anthropologist Stella Nyanzi (Uganda); artist Lorraine O’Grady (U.S.); writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (U.S.); and choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba (South Africa); among others. See full list below.  
 
The symposium will feature performances, film screenings, and conversations organized around key directives, including:  

Maroonage: Maroons refer to the people who escaped slavery and created independent communities on the outskirts of enslaved communities. The maroonage directive is informed by the artist Deborah Anzinger’s explorations of fugitivity and resistance in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, which is a site of historical refuge and resistance for Maroons.  
 
Manual: This directive is inspired by the Manual for General Housework from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval.   
 
Magical Realism: Magically real forms are the music, literature, and movement languages developed by Black people in the New World as a result of the catastrophes of colonialism and the middle passage.    
 
Medicine: This directive is inspired by how we cope with the natural and supernatural world around us. It draws on our approaches to diverse ailments; physical, spiritual, natural, and supernatural. For this gathering, we consider the work of root and leaf doctors, traditional healers and conjurors of the rural Black American South and the global South.   
 
Sovereignty: The title of the U.S. Pavilion exhibition, Sovereignty, speaks to notions of self-determination, self-governance and independence for both the intellectual and the collaborative.   

Participants: 
Aimee Meredith Cox  
Annette Lane Harrison Richter   
Aracelis Girmay  
Autumn Knight  
Ayana Evans  
Black Quantum Futurism  
Bouchra Khalili  
Canisia Lubrin  
Cecily Bumbray  
Christina Sharpe  
Daniella Rose King  
Deborah Anzinger  
Denise Ferreira da Silva  
Diane Sousa da Silva Lima 
Dionne Brand  
dream hampton  
Firelei Baez  
Françoise Vergès  
Gail Lewis  
Gessica Geneus  
Gloria Wekker  
Grada Kilomba  
Holly Bass  
Ja’Tovia Gary  
Janaína Oliveira  
Javiela Evangelista  
Jessica Lynne  
Kettly Noël  
Las Nietas de Nonó  
Legacy Russell  
Leslie Hewitt  
Lisa Marie Simmons  
Lorraine O’Grady  
Maaza Mengiste  
Mabel O. Wilson  
Maboula Soumahoro  
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich  
Mistura Allison  
Negarra A. Kudumu  
Nelisiwe Xaba  
Nomaduma Masilela  
Nontsikelelo Mutiti  
Nora Chipaumire  
Okwui Okpokwasili  
Olumide Popoola  
Oluremi Onabanjo  
Paloma McGregor  
Phoebe Boswell  
Raquel Lima  
Rizvana Bradley  
Robin Coste Lewis  
Saidiya Hartman  
Sandra Jackson Dumont  
Senam Okudzeto  
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts  
Stella Nyanzi  
Tarana Burke  
Tina Campt  
Tsedaye Makonnen  
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson  
Zara Julius   

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS  
Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago, IL) has created an expansive body of work in sculpture, video, and performance, over the past two decades, that centers Black femme interiority. Inflected by Black feminist theory, Leigh’s practice intervenes imaginatively to fill gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities. Leigh’s sculptural works join forms derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, rendering them via materials and processes associated with the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora. The collaborative ethos that characterizes Leigh’s videos and public programs pays homage to a long history of Black female collectivity, communality, and care. In 2019, Leigh was the first artist commissioned for the High Line Plinth, New York. Recent exhibitions include The Hugo Boss Prize 2018: Simone Leigh, Loophole of Retreat at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2019); the 2019 Whitney Biennial; Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (2017) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Psychic Friends Network (2016) at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London; Hammer Projects: Simone Leigh (2016–17) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; inHarlem: Simone Leigh (2016–17), a public installation presented by The Studio Museum in Harlem at Marcus Garvey Park, New York; The Waiting Room (2016) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Free People’s Medical Clinic (2014), a project commissioned by Creative Time. Leigh’s work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the ICA/Boston, among others.   
 
The works that comprise Leigh’s exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion will be featured in her first museum survey exhibition at the ICA in 2023, which will subsequently tour to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (Fall/Winter 2023/24), and a joint presentation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and California African American Museum (CAAM) in Spring/Summer 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Leigh’s work.   
 
Rashida Bumbray is director of Culture and Art, the Open Society Foundations’ program dedicated to advancing diverse artistic practices and strengthening locally led cultural spaces around the world. Since joining the Open Society Foundations in 2015, Bumbray has launched and overseen many new grantmaking initiatives in global contexts including the Global Initiative for the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage, the Soros Arts Fellowship and the OSF Arts Forum on Art, Public Space and Closing Societies. With colleagues from Haiti’s FOKAL, she helped to inaugurate a new Caribbean cultural foundation, and in collaboration with Open Society-US, she established the Alternative Monuments Initiative. Bumbray began her curatorial career in 2001 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, where she coordinated major exhibitions including Frequency (2005) and Freestyle (2001). As associate curator at The Kitchen, New York, Bumbray organized critically acclaimed exhibitions and commissions including Simone Leigh’s solo exhibition You Don’t Know Where Her Mouth Has Been (2012), among many others. She was guest curator of Creative Time’s public art exhibition Funk, God, Jazz and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn in 2014, which included Leigh’s Free Peoples’ Medical Clinic. Bumbray is also an accomplished choreographer whose practice draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms. Her performances have been presented by Tate Modern, London; the New Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harlem Stage, and SummerStage, all in New York; and Project Row Houses, Houston.   

ABOUT SIMONE LEIGH: SOVEREIGNTY  
Simone Leigh: Sovereignty features a new body of work made for the United States Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022, commissioned by the ICA in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Sovereignty commingles disparate histories and narratives, including those related to ritual performances of the Baga peoples in Guinea, early Black American material culture from the Edgefield District in South Carolina, and the landmark 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. With a series of bronzes and ceramics both outside and inside the Pavilion, Leigh intervenes imaginatively to fill gaps in the historical record by proposing new hybridities. Learn more at simoneleighvenice2022.org.    

ABOUT THE ICA/BOSTON   
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 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.   

ABOUT LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA   
Established in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia is acknowledged today as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions. La Biennale stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends and organizes events in its specific sectors of Arts (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934), alongside research and training activities. The International Art Exhibition is considered the most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world, introducing hundreds of thousands of visitors to exciting new art every two years. The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (April 23–November 27, 2022) is directed by Cecilia Alemani.   

ABOUT THE U.S. PAVILION   
The United States Pavilion, a building in the neoclassical style in the Giardini della Biennale, Venice, opened on May 4, 1930. Since 1986, the U.S. Pavilion has been owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and managed by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, which works closely with the U.S. Department of State and exhibition curators to install and maintain all official U.S. exhibitions presented in the Pavilion. Every two years, museum curators from across the country detail their visions for the U.S. Pavilion in proposals that are reviewed by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE), a group comprising curators, museum directors, and artists, who then submit their recommendations to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Past exhibitions can be viewed on the Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s website at https://www.guggenheim-venice.it/.   

ABOUT THE BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE   
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) builds relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries through academic, cultural, sports, professional, and private exchanges, as well as public-private partnerships and mentoring programs. These exchange programs improve foreign relations and strengthen the national security of the United States, support U.S. international leadership, and provide a broad range of domestic benefits by helping break down barriers that often divide us, like religion, politics, language, and ethnicity, and geography. ECA programs build connections that engage and empower people and motivate them to become leaders and thinkers, to develop new skills, and to find connections that will create positive change in their communities. For more information, please visit https://exchanges.state.gov/us.  
 

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Simone Leigh is presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in partnership with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

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 Andrew W. 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, The 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; Kristen and Kent Lucken; Tristin and Martin Mannion; Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick; Gina and Stuart Peterson; Helen and Charles Schwab; the Terra Foundation for American Art; and VIA Art Fund.  

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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 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; Jill and Nick Woodman; Nicole Zatlyn and Jason Weiner; 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.

 

Exhibition features immersive installations by six international artists: El Anatsui, Madeline Hollander, Ibrahim Mahama, Karyn Olivier, Ebony G. Patterson, and Joe Wardwell

(Boston, MA—May 3, 2022) On May 26, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open at the ICA Watershed Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms, an exhibition of large-scale installations by six international artists who reclaim and reuse industrial and everyday materials: El Anatsui (b. 1944, Anyako, Ghana), Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles), Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Tamale, Ghana), Karyn Olivier (b. 1968, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago), Ebony G. Patterson (b. 1981, Kingston, Jamaica), and Joe Wardwell (b. 1972, Chapel Hill, NC). Inspired by the mixed-use history of the Watershed space—first built in the 1930s as a copper pipe and sheet metal facility and serving since 2018 as a free site for contemporary art—the exhibition highlights how artists have derived inspiration from industry and labor through the poetic and political power of found images and goods. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms will be on view through September 5, 2022.

The six installations are as varied as the artists’ practices: Anatsui collects bottle caps and other refuse to form glittering, tapestry-like sculptures; Hollander programs automobile head and taillights as a choreography of street traffic; and Patterson makes intricate collages of flowers, birds, butterflies, and figures using the alluring and layered metaphor of the garden. Olivier and Mahama collect used clothing and crates, respectively, to build towering sculptures that reflect on human persistence, labor, and ingenuity. Finally, Wardwell, a Boston-based artist, will create a new, site-specific installation in dialogue with the rich history of labor songs.

“The artworks in Revival capture the power of reuse, resilience, and reclamation, celebrating a revival of the everyday at monumental scale,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “These impressive, large-scale works take full advantage of the Watershed’s voluminous space, offering visitors the opportunity for exploration, discovery, and reflection.”

“The Watershed’s physical environment uniquely brings its past and present into dialogue, offering a bridge between the histories and practices of industry and of art,” said Erickson. “The idea for Revival came out of this dialogue. In their work, the artists in the exhibition reflect on systems of industry, nature, and society, making visible the often invisible forces that shape human experiences.”

Entry to the Watershed is free. Timed tickets are required for Water Shuttle transportation between the ICA and the Watershed, and can be purchased in advance online at icaboston.org. Water Shuttle tickets will be available online beginning May 4 for ICA members and May 11 for the general public.

Watershed Summer Events

Free Admission: Memorial Day, Juneteenth, and Labor Day
Mon, May 30, 10 AM–5 PM
Sun, Jun 19, 10 AM–5 PM
Mon, Sep 5, 10 AM–5 PM
The ICA is offering free museum admission for all on Memorial Day, Juneteenth, and Labor Day. Advanced timed tickets are required and will be available to reserve online at 10 AM the day before the event.

Play Date: Watershed Family Day
Sat, Jul 30, 11 AM–4 PM
Join us for a special ICA Play Date in the East Boston shipyard for a Watershed family day featuring music, community and art making. Please note that there will be no Play Date programming at the ICA’s Seaport location.

Shipyard Block Party
Sat, Aug 13, 12–5 PM
Spend the day in the East Boston Shipyard and Marina for an afternoon of art, music, games, local libations, and food. Please note that there will be no free Water Shuttle service for this event.

Artist Biographies

El Anatsui (b. 1944 in Anyako, Ghana) is a sculptor whose iconic installations transform everyday and recycled materials in dazzling, large-scale wall-based artworks. He is best known for his use of bottle caps that are hammered flat and then sewn together to create a metallic fabric, belying their coarse material in fluid and reflective configurations. Anatsui lives and works in Nsukka, Nigeria.

Madeline Hollander (b. 1986 in Los Angeles) is an artist, choreographer, and dancer who has performed with the Los Angeles Ballet and the Angela Corella’s Barcelona Ballet. Her art installation and performance practice explores the orchestration of movement by natural and built structures, from city traffic to the emergency systems in buildings to the migration of crickets. Hollander lives and works between New York and Los Angeles.

Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987 in Tamale, Ghana) is an author and artist who repurposes already repurposed objects to trace and investigate ideas of industry, commodity, and migrant labor. He creates monumental installations from collected and reused objects such as jute sacks sewn together in large-scale tapestries, or shoemaker boxes, wooden containers that are commonplace for “shoeshine boys” in the global south. Mahama lives and works between Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, Ghana.

Karyn Olivier (b. 1968 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) explores how collective and individual memories remain and collect within everyday materials. Her sculpture, installation, video, photography, and public art interweaves histories of objects and locations with present-day narratives, highlighting overlooked histories and reinterpreting the permanence of monuments in public spaces. Olivier lives and works in Philadelphia.

Ebony G. Patterson (b. 1981 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a mixed media artist whose elaborate and multi-layered installations and sculptures address diverse experiences of the Black diaspora. Her works frequently evoke luscious environments mixed with difficult and dark imagery, recalling ideas of growth and decay, entropy and creation, in the natural and unnatural worlds. Patterson lives and works between Kingston and Chicago.

Joe Wardwell (b. 1972 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) is a painter and muralist whose work combines text and graphic languages with bright, evocative installations. His work frequently incorporates lyrics drawn from rock ballads, alternative musical genres, or spoken word poetry in an investigation of the cultural landscapes throughout the United States. Wardwell lives and works in Jamaica Plain, MA.

About the Watershed

On July 4, 2018, the ICA opened to the public its new ICA Watershed 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 vast and welcoming space to see and experience large-scale art. The Watershed builds upon the extraordinary momentum achieved by the museum since opening its visionary waterfront building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in 2006. Admission to the Watershed—central to the museum’s vision for art and civic life—is free for all. Previous exhibitions at the Watershed include an immersive installation by Diana Thater, the U.S. premiere of John Akomfrah’s Purple, and a monumental sculpture by Firelei Báez. The Watershed was closed to the public in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the site was used to distribute boxes of food and art kits to the East Boston community from April 2020 through December 2021.

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. 

Free admission to the ICA Watershed is made possible by the generosity of Alan and Vivien Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation.

The ICA Watershed is supported by Vertex.

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In-kind support of Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms generously provided by Blue Atlantic Fabricators.

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