Carrie Yamaoka: seeing is forgetting and remembering and forgetting again / Ilana Harris-Babou: Liquid Gold

The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts presents two concurrent solo exhibitions: Carrie Yamaoka—seeing is forgetting, and remembering, and forgetting, again and Ilana Harris-Babou—Liquid Gold. Both exhibitions include in-person events featuring the artists.

Carrie Yamaoka’s solo exhibition, seeing is forgetting and remembering and forgetting again, presents a body of work at the intersection of drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture that references the effects of memory on visuality. This presentation marks the artist’s return to a gallery space in which she exhibited her senior thesis project in 1979, shortly after the gallery had opened in its present space. In a series of site visits over the summer of 2022, Yamaoka made rubbings of the gallery walls onto mylar and photographed in the gallery. These rubbings developed into wall based-works in the artist’s studio, recording the history of invisible mark making on the gallery walls. Also included in the exhibition are reconfigurations of previous works by the artist. In recent years Yamaoka has been revisiting works, actively altering their state by separating surfaces from their substrates and recomposing the components to create new works that retain traces of their history. Yamaoka’s work combines different media through non-traditional processes–often alluding to, or even using aspects of, photography to create images that are only activated through the act of display and the reflection of the exhibition space and its viewers. These erasures create, or remember, new ways of being in time. View or download the exhibition handout, including a curator’s essay and checklist.

Liquid Gold is the first chapter in a series of installations by artist Ilana Harris-Babou. Referring to the value assigned to human breastmilk, Liquid Gold looks at the history of breastfeeding as it has been narrativized, advertised, and suggested for Black mothers in America. Like other projects by Harris-Babou, this exhibition, composed of both a video installation and sculpture, examines the consumerism and complexity of the wellness industry, while bringing attention to the racialized social structures that create the parameters for an individual’s agency in making personal health decisions.  The sound for the video, calibrated to the acoustic resonance of the gallery space, revisits the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.” The lyrics and the intimacy of the song also suggest a closeness but amidst a deep loss, holding out the promise that when the child awakes, they will have ‘all the pretty little horses.’ The song is commonly understood to have originated as a lullaby sung by enslaved Black mothers when they would leave their children alone in order to care for their enslaver’s white children. In the passageway approaching the video installation, Harris-Babou installs a sculpture containing ceramic components and other materials derived from historical devices originally designed to aid nursing and breastfeeding, playfully and critically examining the experience and industry of motherhood. Sound and production support was provided by Reese Chahal and Anna Clock. View or download the exhibition handout, including a curator’s essay and checklist.

Related programs
Artist talk by Ilana Harris-Babou. February 15, 2023 at 4:30pm, Zilkha Gallery.
Artist conversation: Carrie Yamaoka and Claire Grace, Associate Professor of Art History at Wesleyan University. March 1, 2023 at 4:30pm, Zilkha Gallery.

Gallery hours are Tuesday–Sunday, 12–5pm. Both exhibitions are curated by Benjamin Chaffee with exhibition management by Rosemary Lennox and installation by Paul Theriault. Follow the Gallery on Instagram for exhibition and programming updates.