Weekly Happenings: June 15–22, 2021
Installation view of Abigail DeVille’s sculptures in Pioneer Works’s exhibition “Brand New Heavies.” Photo: Pioneer Works; Olympia Shannon/Dan Bradica Studio
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.
This week, we are celebrating Juneteenth by highlighting work by awardees that speak to Black excellence and call out racial injustices that still exist today. We recommend checking out Abigail Deville’s sculpture work at Pioneer Works in New York City, Eisa Davis’s installation and performances in celebration of the late playwright Kathleen Collins, and Ebony Noelle Golden’s online ceremony centering Black communities as sites of prismatic liberation.
Celebrating Juneteenth
Ebony Noelle Golden
Jubilee 11213: Work-In-Process
Online Ceremony
June 27, 2021 at 6-7pm ET
Inspired by the founding of the Weeksville community in 1838, Jubilee 11213 tells the story of descendants of a Black FREEdom colony who return to reclaim their ancestral inheritance. Devised as a public processional and theatrical ceremony, this iteration features performance films, music, and stories that venerate Weeksville’s spirit and powerful legacy of self-determination and interdependence. The work is conceived and created by Ebony Noelle Golden and devised with an international ensemble of collaborators.
Eisa Davis
The Essentialisn’t: Gold Taste
Performance Space New York
In-Person Performance and Installation
Through June 27, 2021
Part of Afrofemononomy//Work The Roots—a group activation of black femme theater artists in celebration of each other—this performance and installation explores unproduced one-act plays by the late Kathleen Collins.
Brand New Heavies
Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY
In-person exhibition
Through June 20, 2021
This exhibition brings together monumental work by Creative Capital Awardee Abigail DeVille and artists Xaviera Simmons and Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Each artist has produced a new, site-specific installation that combines video, sculpture, and architecture, and comprises natural, industrial, and found materials.
“Fault Lines: Abigail DeVille Interviewed by Jane Ursula Harris”
BOMB
June 15, 2021
Abigail DeVille talks to BOMB about her two sculptures currently on view at Pioneer Works in New York City which reflect upon what she calls the “invisible histories” buried by racism, neglect, and greed: “America has numerous black holes in which it tries unsuccessfully to bury the bodies of its many democratic operatives. I use black holes as a loose metaphor for historical erasure. Black holes eviscerate matter, but the gravity of the matter remains to be discovered, interrogated, and recognized.”
Events, Exhibitions, & Screenings
Alan Ruiz
Container and Contained
The Kitchen in New York City
In-person exhibition
June 17–July 24, 2021
Alan Ruiz’s practice considers the way the built environment engenders social hierarchies through an array of media, standards, and techniques. This exhibition includes three works that explore the redistribution of value and authority through multiple systems.
Anne Patterson
Mother + Daughter
Jessica Hagen Gallery, Newport, RI
Exhibition
May 22–June 19, 2021
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.
Mallory Catlett
Archive: this was the end
Mabou Mines in New York City
In-person exhibition
Through July 18, 2021
Archive: this was the end is the afterlife of a performance as an interactive sculpture created by Creative Capital Awardee Mallory Catlett and Keith Skretch, in collaboration with sound artist G Lucas Crane. The installation allows the audience to reactivate the set made of a cabinet wall, walking into and around it following the moving portraits.
Michael Rakowitz
Nimrud
Wellin Art Museum at Hamilton College, NY
In-person exhibition
Through June 18, 2021
Using Middle Eastern food wrappers, Michael Rakowitz recreates ancient Assyrian carved stone reliefs which were looted by Western powers or destroyed during the Iraq War.
Tamara Shogaolu
Un(re)solved
The Netherlands Monument in Battery Park, NYC
In-person installation & online experience
June 10–19, 2021
Un(re)solved is an installation, podcast, film, and VR experience which uses augmented reality to explore the stories hidden in this living quilt by invoking the names of victims of civil rights era murders, often racist killings, out of the shadows of the past. The project was created by Tamara Shogaolu and her studio, Ado Ato Pictures in collaboration with Frontline.
Digital Pride 2021
University of Michigan
Digital presentations and lecture
June 12 – July 6, 2021
The University of Michigan hosts a free lineup of digital presentations and lectures for Pride Month. Included in the program is Creative Capital Awardee Becca Blackwell’s They, Themself and Schmerm and Taylor Mac’s Whitman in the Woods.
In the News
“On making space for the impossible”
Creative Independent
June 2, 2021
Sabrina Orah Mark talks to Creative Independent about her writing practice: “I sit down often and I have no idea what I’m doing. Often I don’t really know what I think until I write through it. I’ve been holding on to writing more and more as a kind of life raft so that I can understand what is happening around me.”
“Fascinated by Synchronicities: A Conversation through Tarot with Elissa Washuta”
Los Angeles Review of Books
June 6, 2021
Elissa Washuta talks about her new book and Creative Capital Project White Magic through a tarot card reading.
“Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grants 18 Projects”
Sundance Institute
June 9, 2021
Three Creative Capital Projects—Crystal Kayiza‘s The Gardeners, Débora Sousa Silva‘s Black Mothers, and Jasmin Mara López‘s Silent Beauty—received a Sundance Documentary Fund Grant. In total, $590,000 in unrestricted grant support was awarded to 18 projects in various stages including five in development, eight in production, and five in post-production.
“A brush with… Michael Rakowitz”
The Art Newspaper
June 9, 2021
Michael Rakowitz talks to the Art Newspaper in their podcast “A Brush with…” about the influence of his mother’s Iraqi Jewish family on his practice, his earliest influences, and the question “what is art for?”
“Joseph Keckler: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert”
NPR
June 14, 2021
Joesph Keckler performs four songs for NPR’s tiny Desk Concert, filmed in Brooklyn. “A classically trained singer, performance artist and writer whose work spans styles and genres,” writes NPR, “Keckler turns his Tiny Desk (home) concert, shot in Brooklyn, into a showcase of his dynamism as a performer.”
“Ekene Ijeoma reveals the revolutionary potential of data-based art”
Document Journal
June 16, 2021
Document Journal writes about Ekene Ijeoma’s artistic practice, which is driven by an activist spirit: “the artist and MIT assistant professor creates participatory installations that reveal urgent truths about our unjust world.”
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…