The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to announce a special season of List Projects exhibitions that center artistic collaborations. Spanning the 2023-24 season, three two-person presentations—featuring fields harrington and Nancy Valladares; Sophie Friedman-Pappas and TJ Shin; and, finally, Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV—will commemorate the 10th year of this signature series focused on introducing emerging artists. Each presentation pairs artists who share a history of conversation and fosters their continued collaboration through a joint commission.
List Projects 27: fields harrington and Nancy Valladares
On view through October 29, 2023
fields harrington and Nancy Valladares work across disciplines and media including sculpture and installation, text, photography, and the moving image. Both artists use research to take a critical eye to overlooked technological and industrial histories. Alongside a jointly authored new commission [On Exhaustive Rifts, 2023], their exhibition presents sections from Valladares’s PHOTO/SYNTHETIC (2021—ongoing), which unpacks the environmental and economic impacts of the use of silver in analog photography, and a trio of works by harrington that take on the complicated legacy of Norbert Rillieux (1806–1894), a Black American chemical engineer and the inventor of the multiple-effect evaporator.
List Projects 28: Sophie Friedman-Pappas and TJ Shin
November 16, 2023—February 11, 2024
In their respective practices, TJ Shin and Sophie Friedman-Pappas work in sculpture and installation as well as collage and drawing. Both artists share an affinity for incorporating, and animating, organic materials, such as mugwort leaves that Shin “transfected,” or spliced, with their own DNA, or the urine-tanned sheep hide and bird excrement found in Friedman-Pappas’ recent pieces. Friedman-Pappas and Shin’s List Center exhibition will center a collaborative commission, presented in context with a focused selection of individually authored artworks.
List Projects 29: Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV
March 7—June 9, 2024
The third and final exhibition in the season features the work of artists Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV. The presentation will focus on the artists’ attention to regional histories, both in their individual practices and their work as co-founders of Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, an artist-led space in Fall River, MA, that sustains a dialogue with the town’s visual culture and industrial past. Brittni Ann Harvey’s recent sculptures have likewise drawn links between Fall River’s former textile industry and the robotics industry now flourishing in Massachusetts. Harry Gould Harvey IV’s works also consider the region’s economic and class dynamics, often by reconfiguring architectural ornamentation from Gilded Age mansions in Newport, RI, constructed by laborers from nearby Fall River.
About this season
This special season of List Projects exhibitions is curated by Selby Nimrod, Assistant Curator. A closing workshop featuring all six artists will round out the series, offering an opportunity for the artists to reflect on what it means for institutions to prioritize conversation and collaboration in their exhibition spaces.
Support
Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Fotene & Tom Coté, Audrey & James Foster, Idee German Schoenheimer, Joyce Linde, Cynthia & John Reed, and Sara-Ann & Robert Sanders. This exhibition is also supported by generous donors to the 2023 McDermott Award Gala, hosted by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Vice Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council; and many generous individual donors. In-kind media sponsorship is provided by 90.9 WBUR. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.
