Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid / In Practice: Another Echo

SculptureCenter is pleased to announce Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City, and In Practice: Another Echo, an exhibition presented through SculptureCenter’s open call commissioning program for emerging artists.

Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid
New York City-based artist Carissa Rodriguez examines the material and social conditions in which art is produced and reveals how the canonical figure of the artist is reflected in—and reproduced by—the products of her labor. Rodriguez’ solo exhibition at SculptureCenter features a newly commissioned video work titled
 The Maid (2018), as well as another newly produced video, The Girls (1997-2018), and a new series of photographic works, All the Best Memories are Hers (2018). By engaging the discourse of sculpture through the tools of cinema, The Maid follows the lives of “related” artworks and recasts the conditional relationships between artist, artwork, and third-party agents (institution, caregiver, surrogate) in familial terms. Through this exhibition, Rodriguez investigates how techniques of modern reproduction—both artistic and biological—are organized around property and kinship structures that are in turn mediated through technology and the law.

The Maid is curated by Ruba Katrib and is accompanied by a color publication with essays by Katrib and Leah Pires. Carissa Rodriguez’ video commission is underwritten by Valeria Napoleone XX SculptureCenter. Valeria Napoleone XX SculptureCenter (VNXXSC) is an ongoing initiative that supports the production of a major artwork by a female artist in a selected exhibition at SculptureCenter. Additional support for The Maid is provided by Barbara and Howard Morse and Karma International, Zurich/Los Angeles. In-kind support from Genelec. The exhibition will travel to MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge in spring 2018.

In Practice: Another Echo
The exhibition features newly commissioned works by: Elena Ailes & Simon Belleau, Nobutaka Aozaki, Cudelice Brazelton, Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall, Carey Denniston, Jules Gimbrone, Baseera Khan,
 Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Courtney McClellan, Jon Wang, Carmen Winant, and Lachell Workman.

An echo suggests an interaction and a return: an emanation which hits a surface and reverberates as instantaneous memory—a powerful tool for envisioning and rewriting history in the present. The word “another” itself suggests recurrence, but with difference. In Practice: Another Echo brings together the work of 12 artists and artist teams engaged in reshaping experiences and forms of public space. Often responding to imposed sociopolitical conditions, the artists in this exhibition project voice and language, and make use of responsive and vernacular materials. Rather than glance at the past with nostalgia, these artists share a preoccupation with the present moment: obscuring, adapting, and subverting surrounding signs and physical structures in order to witness, reinvent, and survive the often agitated terrain of contemporary life. Across their work, which encompasses sculpture, live sound, video, and drawing, questions persist about how the self, in the midst of deep inner-processing, can converse with the present.

In Practice: Another Echo is curated by SculptureCenter’s 2018 Curatorial Fellow Allie Tepper and is accompanied by a color publication. In Practice: Another Echo is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

About SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter leads the conversation on contemporary art by supporting artistic innovation and independent thought highlighting sculpture’s specific potential to change the way we engage with the world. Positioning artists’ work in larger cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts, SculptureCenter discerns and interprets emerging ideas. Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter provides an international forum that connects artists and audiences by presenting exhibitions, commissioning new work, and generating scholarship.

SculptureCenter’s exhibition, program, and operating support is generously provided by grants from the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the Kraus Family Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the National Endowment for the Arts; the A. Woodner Fund; Jeanne Donovan Fisher; the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation; New York City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer; and contributions from our Board of Trustees and Director’s Circle. Strategic planning support is provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Fund of The New York Community Trust. Additional funding is provided by the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation and contributions from many generous individuals.

For more information, visit www.sculpture-center.org.