Issue 06: Timestamp

ISSUE 06: TIMESTAMP 4

Evelyn Rydz, Unraveling, #7, 2019. Colored pencil. 11" x 14". Photo by Stewart Clements. See p. 16.

Boston Art Review is an online and print publication committed to facilitating active discourse around contemporary art in Boston and beyond. BAR seeks to bridge the gap between criticism and coverage while elevating diverse perspectives.

ISSUE 06: TIMESTAMP WINTER 2021 Founder & Editor-in-Chief Jameson Johnson Guest Editor Nakia Hill Creative Director Julianna Sy Deputy Editor Phillip Zminda Senior Editor Jacqueline Houton Editor-at-Large Leah Triplett Harrington Editorial Assistant Maya Rubio Design Assistant Nicole Whitted Copyright All content and artwork © the writers, artists, and Boston Art Review.

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Contributors Danielle Abrams Jenna Crowder Shaka Dendy Olivia Deng Margo Gabriel Shana Dumont Garr Erin Genia Lydia Gordon Karolina Hac Asiyah Herrera Olivia J. Kiers Alex Lukas slandie prinston Cassandra Rodriguez Jonathan Rowe Mallory A. Ruymann Jacquinn Sinclair Gabriel Sosa Michelle Stevens Christopher Streat Mel Taing Martina Tanga Elizabeth TiBlanc Rico St. Paul Lex Weaver Cover Image Cicely Carew, For what is bitter and what is sweet is all for my growing, 2020.

Acrylic on Yupo paper, 26” x 40”.

Published by Boston Art Review Boston, MA © 2021 Boston Art Review bostonartreview.com ISSN 2577-4557 Issue 06

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CONVERSATIONS 06 To Be a Painting: Cicely Carew on What Is Bitter and What is Sweet by Mallory A. Ruymann 22 Words: What Are They Good For? by Gabriel Sosa and Danielle Abrams 32 Sonya Clark Pulls on the Threads of History

by Olivia J. Kiers

WINTER 2021

46 Cristi Rinklin’s Recent Paintings Speak of Solitude, Anxiety, and Hope by Martina Tanga

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56 Tiny Art for Uncertain Futures: A Conversation with Eben Haines of Shelter in Place Gallery

by Jameson Johnson

FEATURES 14 Observation and Imagination: The Art of Evelyn Rydz

by Jacqueline Houton 26 To the Thirteenth Floor: Thoughts on Plastics, Proximity, and Presence by Leah Triplett Harrington

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CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES 42 Change With(out) a Revolution: Where Institutions Fail Us

by Jenna Crowder 52 How Cemeteries Are Being Transformed into Sites for Public Art by Olivia Deng 70

68 Dislodging the Cultural Infrastructure of Indigenous Peoples’ Dispossession by Erin Genia, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate

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REVEL IN BLACK EXCELLENCE 74 Kai Grant: A Champion of Roxbury by Margo Gabriel

GUEST EDITED BY NAKIA HILL

80 Subversive Celebration: Photography of Black Joy and Healing in a Summer of Reckoning by Jonathan Rowe 88 Making Space for Gen Z: The Impact of Young Voices in Community Art Initiatives by Asiyah Herrera 92 Face to Face with Ayana Mack by Jacquinn Sinclair 96 Home Is a Place Called Bella by Christopher Streat 100 Embodying Art: The Black, Immigrant, and Queer Body on Display by slandie prinston 104 On Armor and Empowerment with Perla Mabel by Lex Weaver ISSUE 06: TIMESTAMP

108 Uprooting Truths and Painting them Boldly: In Conversation with Destiny Palmer by Elizabeth TiBlanc 112 Astro Returns to the Galaxies by Nakia Hill

ARTIST PROJECTS 62 Stay Safe, Stay Home: Road Text in a Time of Contagion by Alex Lukas 000 Poster Insert: Blutopia by Shaka Dendy

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REVIEWS 118 “Wayfinding” Exhibition Expands the Critical Possibilities of Historic Maps as Artists Mine Archives at the Addison Gallery by Shana Dumont Garr 122 A Dance Between Past and Present: Chantal Zakari’s “A Work in Progress” at Kingston Gallery by Karolina Hac 125

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124 Sensing Growth in the Cracks: Beatrice Modisett at Montserrat College of Art Galleries by Lydia Gordon

CONVERSATION 6

TO BE A PAINTING: CICELY CAREW ON WHAT IS BITTER & WHAT IS SWEET

By Mallory A. Ruymann

Portrait of Cicely Carew in her Waltham studio, 2020.

Photo by Claire Gerard.

Cicely Carew’s paintings are an exercise in new ways to sense.

No matter the individual work, a choreography of material, composition, layering, and an enduring contemplation of the nature of existence converge in space and time to offer a profound moment of being with art. When we live in such acute and collective isolation, craving connection with others, Carew’s paintings are a precious space for everyone to feel together the resiliency, freedom, and joy undergirding how the artist moves through the world.

Mallory A. Ruymann: It feels novel to be in a studio after months of looking at art online. How was your transition back into the space of art IRL? Cicely Carew: I felt uncertainty coming back into the studio after self-isolation. At home, I could only make art on the computer. When I made the initial gesture for my first post-lockdown work, For what is bitter and what is sweet is all for my growing, I questioned if I knew what I was doing. Isn’t that the remarkable part of the process— when you push through uncertainty and trust that you have all of the tools at your disposal?

MAR: For what is bitter exists on a more intimate scale than other works I have seen. I’m thinking specifically of your show at Simmons, where paintings were so materially expressive they tumbled into sculpture.

MAR: I want to contextualize the uncertainty you mentioned. The art market has manufactured a narrow margin for artists to function successfully within, even influencing what museums can show. All things considered, few women BIPOC artists are market-tested and approved, so there’s a demand for work that looks like known quantities. How do you navigate making on your own terms?

CC: Being both a woman and a Black artist, the space appears to be limited in some ways. There was already a demand for Black artists to craft a certain message in order to be recognized, which doesn’t resonate with me, and now the way our voices are being commodified makes the current openness feel temporary. Institutions are

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CC: When I get really material-heavy, like in the work at Simmons, I simply play and use my whole body to create, fully extending my limbs and weight. My practice is grounded in the application of layers—adding, subtracting, working with my lexicon, playing with the painting’s grammar, if you will. In addition to thinking a lot about Suprematism, Modernism, Abstract-Expressionism, and

jazz when I work, I think about the artistic traditions of my ancestry—via 23andMe, I’m pan-African and Latina, with Mayan ancestry—and how weaving, color, pattern, texture, and ritual relate to synchronicities in my process.

Though I don’t have direct contact with these traditions because I’m adopted, I’m fascinated by the mystery of my ancestors and how they might unconsciously inform my use of layering as a means to contemplate and destabilize hierarchies.

CICELY CAREW

I visited Carew at her studio in Waltham in October 2020, a month before the watershed 2020 United States presidential election and when it felt safe (at least then) to see people not over a screen. What-ifs, anxiety, and hope saturated the background of our nearly two-hour discussion. In hindsight, things have both changed and not really changed since. Nevertheless, I still find Carew’s effervescent reflections on life and art from that moment in time to resonate with the present—and likely the future—as we continue searching for paths away from precarity and towards wholeness. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.

WORDS: WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

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CONVERSATION

A Conversation Between Gabriel Sosa and Danielle Abrams Introduction by Gabriel Sosa

A billboard from Gabriel Sosa’s No es fácil/It Ain’t Easy 2020–21. Installation view, Blue Hill Avenue and Warren Street, Dorchester, September 2020. Photo by Iaritza Menjívar.

we began a conversation that continues to this day. In the years since I’ve graduated, we’ve worked together as artist and curator on multiple occasions, and our initial relationship as professor and student has evolved to that of friend and collaborator. Most recently, I curated a series of virtual performances for the inaugural Area Code Art Fair last June and enlisted Danielle to perform Great (2020), a monologue developed specifically for the fair. Delivered from her kitchen table, the work traces the history of a Black family that migrated from Virginia to New York in the 1940s, the matriarch of which is, presumably, her great-grandmother.

Months later, Danielle and I discussed why language matters, our current projects online and IRL, and our vision for what lies ahead for the United States.

Gabriel Sosa: I recently rewatched Great, in which you play a fictionalized version of yourself recalling childhood experiences when you’d shuttle between the Jewish and Black sides of your family. You revisit that wide-eyed wonderment of childhood with the critical, cautious eye of an adult. I was reminded of how you both savor and scrutinize the hybridity that defines so much of your work. Why is that?

discretion by presenting transcripts at an oversized scale.

Legal rhetoric itself is implicated in your work, in lieu of the defendant. How does this recontextualization of the language serve to change people’s lives, as the courts purport to do?

Danielle Abrams: “Savoring” and “scrutinizing” hybridity!

I’ve always had a hard time with binaries. Perhaps this is a consequence of the hypocrisy that comes with growing up [biracial], where what is lived does not conform to the dominant ideology, which relies upon essentialism and the bifurcation of identity.

Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 legalized the segregation of Blacks and whites in the South. Segregation has left tracks in today’s dirt, whether pertaining to employment, academia, healthcare, home and business ownership, or recreation.

Who has the “right to breathe” is another vestige of Jim Crow. Oxygen is an entitlement that is still denied African Americans, whether by police brutality or through substandard medical care for COVID-19.

My light “passing” skin defies the assumptions that society uses to legitimate racial hierarchy. I’ve spent my life vacillating between white, Jewish, and Black access, privileges, speech, and cultural codes. Because of my racial ambiguity, I frequently bear witness to racism and anti-Semitism. I am grateful for this evidence. It is fodder for my work.

DA: When we’d go to my Aunt Margaret’s house, I learned how to be Black. I know that sounds peculiar, but what I mean is that I learned about Black culture, as distinguished from what was already dominant in my upbringing—white secular Jewishness. Food, which is always the residue of ethnic and cultural identity, was one of my first tastes of a divided identity. Although it was all delicious, bagels, lox, and pot roast were extremely different from the fried chicken, chitterlings, and collard greens covered in hot sauce and cooked by my aunts and great grandmothers who came from the South.

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In terms of linguistic ambivalence—particularly in the courts—I’d like to hear more from you. Your work distorts the legibility of legal language. You also defy its presumed

GS: Right, so much of the language I encounter as a court interpreter informs my artwork, whether it’s the legalese of a court order or an emotional testimony. A lot of this language is routine, rendered generally unremarkable to those who utter it on a daily basis. Moving that language from the courtroom and into a drawing or video piece completely transforms it—almost like the colors in Josef Albers’s exercises. Context is everything. I’m not sure that recontextualization alone changes any lives, but I hope that it gets a conversation started. In fact, you and I share a love of recontextualizing language. In Great, there’s a scene where you shake Tabasco sauce onto a threedimensional paper cutout of a plate of home-cooked food, soaking yourself in the process, all while you exclaim and repeat the words “liquor, food, joy.” Can you talk about what went into that?

GABRIEL SOSA & DANIELLE ABRAMS

Danielle Abrams’s performances are as poignant as they are humorous, drawing from her queer, Black, and Jewish identities she creates and performs characters that illuminate the myths and entanglements of being biracial in the United States. In her work, she has embodied figures as wide-ranging as her Black grandmother from the South, her Jewish bubbe from Queens, various members of the Black Panther Party, and the fictitious Black ballerina Eleanora Antinova.

Out of character, speaking in the plush baritone and muted r’s of her natural New York accent, Danielle is both contemplative and charming, and just as spellbinding as those that she personifies. We met when I was a graduate student at SMFA at Tufts, where she is a professor of performance. When Danielle visited my studio to discuss my work over Cuban coffee,

JJ: The number one thing I hear from artists in Boston is, “There’s not enough space to show my work.”

Regardless of the pandemic, you’re really providing crucial space for Boston-based artists. Could you talk a little bit about why you wanted to make this a Bostoncentric project?

CONVERSATION

EH: Well, so, again, having this miniature space as a way for me originally to be able to make the big things I wanted to make, but I didn’t have the money or the space for. We have very few spaces in the city that will show large-scale and non-commercial work. We wanted Shelter in Place Gallery to become one of those spaces.

The rent issue in Boston makes it so art spaces are disappearing all the time, and in turn, the galleries that do make it have to show really “sellable” work to keep their doors open. I grew up here and have always been kind of disappointed in what our art scene has to offer local artists. This project is an attempt at pushing that scene a little bit towards what I would like it to be.

It was also a logistics decision. We launched this at the start of COVID when people were still really nervous about the virus living on surfaces like the mail. Originally, everything was just dropped at our doorstep, and we’d walk to the door and then wave through the window and go pick it up once the artists had left.

JJ: You’ve presented over fifty exhibitions at this point.

What’s the question you get asked the most from artists who are participating in your shows?

EH: That’s a good question. At the beginning, it was definitely a lot about how big the space actually was. I was so confused by this because I would say, “You can see all the dimensions online,” and they would say, “No, but it has to be bigger, right? You meant to put feet but you put inches?” We even got submissions for enormous pieces from people who didn’t realize the space wasn’t actually what it appeared to be. But now, most people seem to get it. The jig is up I suppose. Back to your last question, people also asked a lot about where the space was located. They would say, “This space doesn’t exist in Boston. How is this possible?”

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JJ: You really had people fooled! Especially with the details put into the space and the matter-of-fact voice you use on your Instagram about “unpacking crates” or working with your “registrar.” Do you have any plans for maintaining or altering the storyline you’ve created?

EH: We talk a lot about our “art handler team” and our “registrar team” and things like that. This comes

partially from my experience working at the museum, but also very deliberately trying to make public a lot of the private and invisible work that happens behind the scenes with any gallery or institution.

Our storyline is changing [soon], because the gallery itself was actually sold to the Museum of Fine Arts and is going to be in their new acquisitions show starting sometime this winter or spring. So we have a storyline planned for announcing our “move.” Something like “The landlord sold the space, and we have to get out of there.”

JJ: Wow! The indie space going to the big museum! What will become of the project then?

JJ: One thing I admire about the prolific nature of the gallery’s exhibitions is that you have more opportunities to showcase work that speaks to the present moment than a gallery or museum that has to plan months or even years in advance. How would you say the gallery has been responsive to shifts in our social and political climates?

EH: We definitely prioritize works that address those things. Over the summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we told people, “If you give us something that’s just nice and kind of escapist, we’re probably going to push that off.” But again, it is submission-based, so it’s hard to push that too hard. I think people who are making work right now are thinking about all this stuff a lot, and so it hasn’t been too tough getting politically engaged work in the space. (opposite top) Inside the gallery, Haines created miniature furniture to fill the space between installations. (opposite bottom) Wilhelm Neusser, Untitled (Large Bog for SIP), installation view, 2020. Oil on linen, 22” x 14.” (below) Susan Metrican, “Music Under Things,” installation view, 2020.

SHELTER IN PLACE

EH: We’re still trying to figure out exactly how it’s going to work. We do want to maybe turn it into a statement about the rent crisis and also big institutions kind of taking over. I honestly have some mixed emotions about it. If Michelle Millar Fisher, one of the curators there, hadn’t been the one to suggest it, I probably would have said no, but I really trust her and I’m excited for the vision she has. It’s tough though. I obviously don’t agree with everything the museum does and I feel a bit uncomfortable that people will now have to pay money to see it, but I appreciate that this will allow the project

to be preserved and protected even if we eventually decided to stop running it.

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Nakia Hill is a writer, journalist, and educator who focuses on empowering Black women and girls to use writing as a tool for healing and resistance. She was named a Boston Artist-in-Residence in 2018 by Mayor Walsh. Hill is the author of two books: Water Carrier and I Still Did It.

Jacqueline Houton is an editor and writer based in Cambridge. Currently a copyeditor at a children’s and YA publisher, she is a former editor of The Improper Bostonian and former managing editor of The Phoenix and STUFF magazine. Her writing has appeared in Boston magazine, DigBoston, Bitch magazine, Big Red & Shiny, and other publications.

MEET THE TEAM

Jameson Johnson is a writer, editor, and independent curator based in Boston. She is the founder and editor-in-chief at Boston Art Review and the marketing associate at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Her research practice is rooted in the exploration and preservation of narratives through contemporary information archives.

Maya Rubio is a senior Business of Creative Enterprises major in Emerson College’s Honors Program. Along with her work for Boston Art Review, Rubio is currently the Education and Public Programs Fellow at Emerson Contemporary. Whether she’s working in the theatre or contemporary art sphere, Rubio is inspired to help create inclusive communities through meaningful art experiences.

Julianna Sy is a designer and creative director with ties to Boston, Los Angeles, and New Mexico. Her work prioritizes inclusivity and compassion and functions on the principles of artistic expression, mutual aid, and anti-oppression. Sy has been a designer with BAR since Issue 01. She is a book designer at Not A Cult Media, producing recent titles Well Played by Beau Sia and Zigzags by Kamala Puligandla.

Leah Triplett Harrington serves as assistant curator for Now + There and editor-at-large for Boston Art Review. The founding editor of the publication and platform The Rib, Triplett Harrington also edited Big Red & Shiny from 2013 to 2018. Her writing has appeared in Flash Art, Hyperallergic, WBUR’s The ARTery, Big Red & Shiny, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Nicole Whitted is a Black designer and creative with a strong belief that creativity is more than aesthetic—it is a powerful tool to use your voice and amplify lived experiences.

Whitted is a design assistant at Boston Art Review and has created work for Jr. Hi The Magazine, Girls in Film, and Parade.

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Phillip Zminda is a Boston-based writer and editor and has been on the Boston Art Review team since Issue 02. When not being a stickler for style at BAR, he writes about food and health for John Brown Media.

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