Kathleen Ryan: Cultivator
February 8–April 21, 2019
Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage
Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Canada) traces the impact of colonialism and its pervasive legacy by considering historical narrative and the archive. Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalized or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials. At the core of her exhibition at the List Center is an engagement with racialized surveillance and the power dynamics inherent in seeing and being seen. Kiwanga follows the lineage of surveillance and positions it in relation to blackness in America, from its roots in slavery to the role that technology performs today. Safe Passage presents four recent interconnected bodies of work that address the history of forced visibility, strategic concealment, and networks of resistance.
Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage is organized by Yuri Stone, Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.
Support for Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage is provided by Galerie POGGI, Paris; and Étant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE) Foundation. Étant donnés is developed in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, with lead funding from the Florence Gould Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Chanel USA, the ADAGP, the French Ministry of Culture, and Institut Français. In-kind support provided by Stanhope Framers.
Kathleen Ryan: Cultivator
New York-based artist Kathleen Ryan (b. 1984, United States) works primarily in sculpture, deftly employing a variety of materials that range from cast iron, carved marble, and precious stones to found objects like granite manufacturing blocks, satellite dishes, and bowling balls. She engages with sculptural concerns such as volume, balance and line, while subtly referencing the materials’ historical and economic underpinnings. Through carefully devised juxtapositions of form and content, her works also address questions of gender, production, and reproduction. In this exhibition, Ryan presents a group of three new sculptures that place products of nature and industry into proximity, connecting mechanical production to acts of creation. Rendering mundane and industrial materials novel and unfamiliar—bowling balls appear as oversized pearls and parts from a defunct boiler as a maternal figure—Ryan wrests poetry and a sense of humor from her unwieldy sources.
Kathleen Ryan: Cultivator is organized by Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.
Support for Kathleen Ryan: Cultivator is provided by the Henry Moore Foundation; Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; and Josh Lilley, London.
Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Fotene Demoulas & Tom Coté, Audrey & James Foster, Idee German-Schoenheimer, Joyce Linde, Jane & Neil Pappalardo, Cynthia & John Reed, and Terry & Rick Stone. In-kind media sponsorship provided by 90.9 WBUR.
General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Associate Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council, and many generous individual donors. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.
