Weekly Happenings: May 19–25, 2021
Performance still from Kinetic Light’s Wired.
Each week, we create a list of exhibitions, screenings, events, and news featuring Creative Capital Awardees of all disciplines. This list can include shows that have recently opened, shows about to close, and noteworthy headlines and interviews that profile artists and their work. We encourage you to follow the links to explore this week’s art highlights from around the world.
Events, Exhibitions, & Screenings
Alice Sheppard
One + One Make Three
ALL ARTS
Virtual Screening
This fully accessible docu-dance film features 2019 Creative Capital Awardee Alice Sheppard and her ensemble Kinetic Light, which includes disabled dancers Laurel Lawson and Michael Maag. It takes audiences behind the scenes of their new aerial dance work, Wired.
Anne Patterson
Mother + Daughter
Jessica Hagen Gallery, Newport, RI
Exhibition
May 22–June 19, 2021
2006 Creative Capital Awardee Anne Patterson is showing work alongside her mother, Anne Mimi Sammis, for the first time. The exhibition features Patterson’s ribbon and watercolor work and Sammis’s bronze sculptures.
Guadalupe Maravilla
Planeta Abuelx
Socrates Sculpture Park, New York City
Exhibition
This recently opened solo exhibition by 2016 Creative Capital Awardee Guadalupe Maravilla draws on ancestral and Indigenous practices of holistic healing. Maravilla’s sculptures and performance pieces are displayed on the grounds, and the artist will activate the work through healing sound baths—offered on elect dates—which he discovered during his treatment for stomach cancer.
Michelle Handelman
DOOMSCROLLING
PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK and PICA
Virtual Screening
Saturday May 22, 2021 at 8pm ET
PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK and PICA present the livestream premiere of 2019 Creative Capital Awardee Michelle Handelman’s THE PANDEMIC SERIES (2020-2021), with a live collaborative reading and performance between Handelman and musician/performer Shannon Funchess. The series contextualizes characters from Handelman’s previous works into a visual essay about the transfiguring of interiority during periods of isolation and fear.
Nick Cave
Forothermore
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Exhibition
May 14–Oct 2, 2021
MCA Chicago recently opened the first career-spanning retrospective of 2002 Creative Capital Awardee Nick Cave’s work. The exhibition features never-before-seen works, including a continuation of his Soundsuits series and a site-specific installation, Spinner Forest.
Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble
The Sprezzaturameron
Baryshnikov Arts Center
Virtual Screening
May 17–31, 2021
2016 Creative Capital Awardees Tei Blow and Sean McElroy present the world premiere of a new video docudrama. The work follows two men who must confront the precarious nature of art-making in an apocalyptic near-future. As they gain awareness of their own privilege in a reforming world, the duo embarks on a vision quest to craft the perfect apology, inspired by the infamous apologists of the #MeToo era.
Simone Leigh
Brick House
High Line, New York City
Public Art
Through May 23, 2021
Last chance to see 2012 Creative Capital Awardee Simone Leigh’s Brick House on the High Line (30th St & 10th Ave). The title comes from the term for a strong Black woman who stands with the strength, endurance, and integrity of a house made of bricks.
In the News
“Shattering the Glass Ceiling: Curator and Author Legacy Russell on Rebuilding Art Institutions From Within”
Artnet News
May 5, 2021
2021 Creative Capital Awardee Legacy Russell speaks to Artnet on their podcast, Shattering the Glass Ceiling, about growing up in New York City, how institutions can better support artists, and how digital spaces and the internet have influenced her work. She also gives us a shout out!
“Artist Sanford Biggers Explains How Our Misunderstandings of Classical Sculpture Inspired His Rockefeller Center Takeover”
Artnet News
May 7, 2021
Oracle, a new sculpture by 2008 Creative Capital Awardee Sanford Biggers was recently unveiled at Rockefeller Center in New York City. The bronze statue “standing 25 feet tall and weighing in at over 15,000 pounds—is the Harlem-based artist’s largest work to date.”
“Rep Stage radio play ‘Ghost/Writer’ is some mind-blowing writing”
DC Metro
May 15, 2021
John Stoltenberg writes about 2020 Creative Capital Awardee Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi’s new radio play at Rep Stage, Ghost/Writer: “Pandemic necessity having been the mother of extraordinary innovation in theater, I should not have been surprised that the genius who wrote this play for the stage would reconceive it as a radio play. But what blew my mind all over again, as this time I could really listen to it closely, was the language of it—language that alchemized profound insights about racial injustice and sensuality into some of the most stunning poetic dialog I’ve ever heard.”
Ghost/Writer is available on-demand until May 23, 2021.
“Artist Theaster Gates will design the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion”
The Architect’s Newspaper
May 18, 2021
American artist and urbanist Theaster Gates will design the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion, the first non-architect to win the commission in the initiative’s 21-year history. Gates received a Creative Capital Award in 2012.
“Personal Escapes From Daily Anxiety, Political Strife and Childhood Trauma”
New York Times
May 18, 2021
The New York Times reviews 2019 Creative Capital Awardee Elissa Washuta’s new book, White Magic: “Washuta’s essays create a beguiling and haunting account of her spiritual life.”
More News & Stories
We’re excited that the Whitney Biennial 2022, Quiet as It’s Kept (April 6 to September 5, 2022) will include Creative Capital Awardees: Alia Farid (2022), Terence Nance (2021), Sable Elyse…