Upcoming 2018 exhibitions

Wangechi Mutu: A Promise to Communicate
January 19–December 31, 2018
In a new commission for the ICA, Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya) will create a wall-based installation using the gray rescue blankets of humanitarian aid efforts. A Promise to Communicate will be a less rational interpretation of the world map and also include a space for visitors to explore ideas of public space, communication, and free speech.

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
February 7–May 30, 2018
This ambitious exhibition examines how the internet has radically changed the field of art, especially in its production, distribution, and reception. It features work of an international, intergenerational group of artists working in a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—that all investigate the extensive effects of the internet on artistic practice and contemporary culture. Themes explored in the exhibition include emergent ideas of the body and notions of human enhancement; the internet as a site of both surveillance and resistance; the circulation and control of images and information; possibilities for new subjectivities, communities, and virtual worlds; and new economies of visibility initiated by social media.

Kevin Beasley
May 9–August 26, 2018
One of the most exciting artists to emerge in recent years, New York–based Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) uniquely combines sound and clothing—his core artistic materials—in stunning, densely packed sculptures and immersive acoustic experiences. This exhibition, his first in Boston, will present a selection of the artist’s sculptures made over the past four years.

Caitlin Keogh
May 9–August 26, 2018
New York–based artist Caitlin Keogh (b. 1982, Anchorage, Alaska) will create a new body of work for this exhibition, her first in-depth solo museum presentation. Her vivid paintings combine the graphic lines of hand-drawn commercial illustration with the bold matte colors of the applied arts to reimagine fragments of female bodies, natural motifs, pattern, and ornamentation. Drawing from clothing design, illustration, and interior decoration as much as art history, Keogh’s large-scale canvases dissect elements of representations of femininity with considerable wit.

Diana Thater
Summer 2018
In the first major presentation of her work in Boston, Diana Thater (b. 1962, San Francisco) will create a site-specific installation for the inaugural exhibition at the Watershed, a new seasonal space for art located across from the ICA in the East Boston Shipyard and Marina. Thater’s installation will center on the artwork Delphine, reconfigured in response to the Watershed’s raw, industrial space and coastal location. In this monumental work, underwater film and video footage of swimming dolphins spills across the floor, ceiling, and walls, creating an immersive underwater environment. In addition to Delphine, Thater’s Watershed installation will feature a recent sculptural video installation, A Runaway World, produced in Kenya in 2016 and 2017. 

We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85
June 27–September 30, 2018
Focusing on the work of black women artists, this exhibition examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. It is the first exhibition to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period.

Arthur Jafa: Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death
June 27–September 30, 2018
Artist, cinematographer, and filmmaker Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) frequently states that he hopes to create cinema that “replicates the power, beauty, and alienation of Black Music.” A single-channel video installation set to Kanye West’s gospel-inspired “Ultralight Beam,” Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death incorporates a wide range of original and found footage presenting glimpses of the joys and traumas of black life—nuanced, complex, and multifaceted—in the US, which the artist sees as both beautiful and painfully fraught.

For more information, visit icaboston.org