#rutherickson

When Home Won't Let You Stay: ⁣ Migration through Contemporary Art⁣ Available at www.draw-down.com ⁣ ⁣ Individual voices shed light on the societal transformations related to migration and its representation in 21st-century art, offering diverse points of entry into this massive phenomenon and its many manifestations.⁣ ⁣ The featured artworks range from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, video, and sound art, and their makers—including Isaac Julien, Richard Mosse, Reena Saini Kallat, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and Do Ho Suh, among many others—hail from around the world.⁣ ⁣ Amid worldwide tensions surrounding refugee crises and border security, this publication provides a nuanced interpretation of the current cultural moment. Intertwining themes of memory, home, activism, and more, When Home Won’t Let You Stay meditates on how art both shapes and is shaped by the public discourse on migration.⁣ ⁣ #RuthErickson #EvaRespini #home #activism #memory #Migration #ContemporaryArt (at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_PlF6tnqMe/?igshid=rwpqho2s63oi

"American history is a history of traumatic and blatant erasures of black subjects through perniciously visible, durable, and interconnected systems, including the transatlantic slave trade, centuries of enslavement, lynching and public murders, the industrial prison system, and institutional racism. While ranging widely in form and structure, the bodies alluded to in Kevin Beasley’s recent artistic production have been anchored in his exploration of black experiences. His practice has emerged during a period of heightened awareness among whites, myself included, of the destruction of black bodies in America, as so powerfully articulated by the contemporary writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, Saidiya Hartman, and Christina Sharpe, among many others, and by the Black Lives Matter movement. In Beasley’s work, bodies are rarely whole or complete, but rather are envisaged in indeterminate and interconnected states. Sometimes the bodies are “spectral” ones, those of deceased rappers or murdered teens; absences are metaphorically presented in the form of a dented surface or the image of a field in the South at sunset. At other times, the bodies are very particular, and even enumerated as personal objects that figure in his artworks: “That is my thermal shirt . . . my underwear . . . my old sneakers . . . my brother’s wisdom teeth.” And then there are the listeners and viewers who share space with Beasley’s performances, sculptures, and installations, and who are always present in the conception of his work. Beasley conjures these bodies and their states of being through various strategies, from selecting objects and manipulating materials to activating space through sound and installation. Each gesture underscores the ethics of his artistic practice—his respect for the power and responsibility of bringing an artwork into the world that requires space, resources, and care." —Ruth Erickson, from "Kevin Beasley," published to accompany the show on view today through August 29 at @icaboston @kevinmbeasley #kevinbeasley #rutherickson