Tickets will be available March 12 for ICA members and March 19 for the general public. 

Nationally recognized artists Janine Antoni and Pallavi Sen reflect on how encountering the Shakers —a 250-year-old Christian sect of pacifists who value the importance of “attempting to live an extraordinary life” as ordinary individuals—has influenced them in the studio and beyond. The artists will be joined in conversation by  Brother Arnold Hadd of Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine— one of two practicing Shakers in the United States. Jeffrey De Blois, the ICA’s Mannion Family Curator and organizer of Believers: Artists and the Shakers, will moderate this timely conversation on art, life, and community. A reception immediately follows the speaking portion of this program.  

Make the most of your ICA visit!  Explore the galleries and visit the ICA’s featured exhibition: Believers: Artists and the Shakers.  

About the Artists

Janine Antoni is a visual artist born in Freeport, Bahamas. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Antoni is known for her unusual processes. Her body is both her tool for making and the source from which her meaning arises. Antoni’s early work transformed materials like chocolate and soap, and she has used everyday activities like bathing, eating, and sleeping as sculptural processes. She carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses.  

Antoni’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Art Institute of Chicago; among others.  

Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, the New Media Award from the ICA/Boston, and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2011.

Pallavi Sen is an artist originally from Bombay, India. She works with installation, printmaking, textiles, Instagram, and intuitive movement. Sen received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from the Virginia Commonwealth University and has been a fellow and artist-in-residence at Shandaken Projects: Storm King, Mildred’s Lane, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Ox-Bow School of Art, Byrdcliffe at Woodstock, Wormfarm Institute, Yale Norfolk School of Art, Hambidge Center, and ACRE. She is an Assistant Professor of Multiples + Distributed Art at Williams College, and lives/walks in the Berkshires. 

Believers: Artists and the Shakers is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Mannion Family Curator, with Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.