Autumn 2023 exhibitions

For autumn 2023, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University will present three solo exhibitions by artists who trace histories of kinship, migration, and displacement, each representing the artist’s largest museum show to date. A fourth installation by a Columbus-based design practice will activate various spaces at the center through spring 2024.  

Sahar Khoury: Umm 
Khoury draws on lived experiences to inspire sculptural works that incorporate a range of techniques and media. For this exhibition, she’ll present a new body of work referencing history and timekeeping and reflecting how memory evolves. Umm features an assemblage of Wex-commissioned sculptures, some of them installed on new tile plinths realized through a partnership with Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico.  

“Umm,” which means “mother” in Arabic, also nods to the late Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, a towering figure in the region’s culture whose monthly live concerts were broadcast throughout the Arab world.  

Sahar Khoury: Umm is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Curator of Exhibitions Lucy I. Zimmerman with support from Curatorial Assistant Jonathan Gonzalez and Curatorial Intern Bethani Blake.  

Jumana Manna: Break, Take, Erase, Tally 
Manna visualizes the slow violence of dominant power structures and explores ways in which the land can spark resistance. Organized by MoMA PS1, the show brings together nearly 20 works including two feature films.  

Wild Relatives (2018) follows the journey of seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2015 in response to the war in Syria. Foragers (2022) chronicles the confrontations between Palestinian pickers of the wild-growing herbs ‘akkoub and za’atar and the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority. These films will work in conversation with sculptures displayed on plinths that borrow materials found in urban industrial infrastructures.  

Jumana Manna: Break, Take, Erase, Tally is organized by MoMA PS1 Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Ruba Katrib. The Wexner Center’s presentation of the exhibition is coordinated by Daniel Marcus, associate curator of exhibitions.  

Harold Mendez: one way to transform and two and three 
Mendez offers a collection of new sculptures and assemblages informed by the artist’s perspective as a first-generation American of Mexican-Colombian descent. Mendez’s family history guides his ongoing exploration of the historical narratives that have shaped the Americas, and the carefully researched works that result.  

Themes recur, including commemoration, symbolism, and systems of time. In various works, common materials—from clay to homemade arepas—are transformed. Other works act as offerings, and the memory of a body is often present.

Mendez also presents work made in partnership with Cerámica Suro. Other new sculptures were made in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at California State University, Long Beach.

Harold Mendez: one way to transform and two and three is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Head of Exhibitions Kelly Kivland. 

Outpost Office: Color Block No. 2 
Led by Ashley Bigham and Erik Herrmann, professors at Ohio State’s Knowlton School, Outpost Office is a design practice proposing that architecture can be impactful while being inexpensive.  

For this engagement, Outpost Office will focus on interior and exterior spaces to invite public gathering and new ways of seeing the center. The installation will start in August with Drawing Field—an intricate pattern in non-permanent paint, applied by GPS-controlled robots to the lawn on the Wexner Center Plaza. Subsequent phases will bring vibrant, oversized modular furniture to “in-between” spaces in and around the center. 

Outpost Office: Color Block No. 2 is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Kelly Kivland.