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Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms
May 26–September 5, 2022
ICA Watershed
The ICA Watershed presents Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms, an exhibition of large-scale installations by international artists who reclaim industrial and everyday materials. Inspired by the Watershed building’s mixed-use history—built in the 1930s as a copper pipe and sheet metal manufacturing plant and renovated by the ICA in 2018 as a free site for contemporary art—this exhibition highlights how artists have derived inspiration from industry, labor, and the poetic and political power of found goods. Artists include El Anatsui, Madeline Hollander, Ibrahim Mahama, Karyn Olivier, Ebony G. Patterson, and Joe Wardwell, who make visible the often invisible forces that shape human experience. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.
Rose B. Simpson
August 11, 2022–January 29, 2023
The artwork of Rose B. Simpson encompasses ceramic sculpture, metals, performance, installation, writing, and automobile design. Simpson’s figurative ceramic sculptures incorporate metal, wood, leather, fabric, and found objects, and express complex psychological states, spirituality, women’s strength, and post-apocalyptic visions of the world. Part of a multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of artists working with clay, Simpson, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico (Khaap’o Owingeh), calls forth Indigenous knowledge and curative aspects of working with clay to heal generational trauma and foster an internalized notion of sustainability. This tightly conceived exhibition will feature the artist’s signature ceramic sculptures alongside new works. Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
Jordan Nassar
August 11, 2022–January 29, 2023
Jordan Nassar’s solo exhibition—his first in Boston—presents the largest of the artist’s intricate embroidered landscapes in Palestinian tatreez to investigate ideas of home, land, and memory. His artworks, many of which he creates in collaboration with Palestinian embroiders and craftspersons, combine geometric patterns with abstracted landscapes, imbued, in the artist’s words, “with yearning, while hopeful and beautiful.” Through complex patterning and a unique attendance to form and color, the painterly aesthetic of Nassar’s embroidery allows the artist to explore relationships between craft and history in new contemporary dialogues. Organized by Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant.
To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood
October 6, 2022–February 26, 2023
To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood brings together an international and intergenerational group of 38 artists whose work has been directly inspired by childhood. Through thematic sections dedicated to drawing, caretaking, power dynamics, and school, among others, the exhibition explores how time and place, economics and race, and representation and aesthetics fundamentally shape how we experience and understand early human development. Artists include Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jordan Casteel, Henry Darger, Karon Davis, Mary Kelly, Paul Klee, Tau Lewis, Oscar Murillo, Rivane Neuenschwander, Faith Ringgold, Sable Elyse Smith, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Cathy Wilkes, among others. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
Barbara Kruger
November 5, 2022—January 21, 2024
For over 40 years, Barbara Kruger has been a critical observer of contemporary culture. In the early 1980s, Kruger perfected a signature style of words and images extracted from mass media and recomposed into memorable, graphic artworks. Kruger’s prodigious works have come to represent debates on women’s rights, identity, consumerism, and capitalism and have occupied a range of media and spaces. Since the 1990s, Kruger has also created large-scale installations of her text-based art. Continuing in this vein, Kruger will create a brand-new work for the ICA that speaks to contemporary social and political dynamics. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.
