The Henry is pleased to present two new commissioned exhibitions by artists Raúl de Nieves and Kelly Akashi, recent films and new work by Sophia Al-Maria, as well as a presentation of works from the Henry’s photography collection.
Raúl de Nieves: A window to the see, a spirit star chiming in the wind of wonder…
Through August 25, 2024
Throughout his practice, Raúl de Nieves (born 1983, Michoacan, Mexico; lives and works in New York) uses commonplace and castoff materials to create dazzling baroque forms that disrupt hierarchies of cultural and social value, while animating the potential for evolution and multiplicity of the self. A window the see, a spirit star chiming in the wind of wonder… is a new commission by the artist that celebrates the generative power of the imagination through de Nieves’s exuberant material language and visual lexicon that fuses aesthetic traditions of Mexican craft, Catholicism, the tarot, and drag performance. Using the complete architecture of the gallery, de Nieves has created an immersive environment in which light, sculpture, audio, and text come together to stage a story of individual and collective transformation and the power of wonder in the everyday.
Raúl de Nieves: A window to the see, a spirit star chiming in the wind of wonder… is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Curator at the Henry Art Gallery, and Risa Puleo, Independent Curator. Generous support is provided by the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Fund for the Arts, with additional support from Company Gallery and Morán Morán. Media sponsorship is provided by The Stranger.
Kelly Akashi: Encounters
Through May 5, 2024
Material tactility, its possibilities, limitations, and transformation form the core of Kelly Akashi’s (born in 1983 in Los Angeles, California; lives and works in Los Angeles, California) practice. For this commissioned exhibition, the artist continues her explorations in the mapping of time to locate humankind amongst other consciousnesses along Earth’s geological timeline. A series of “folded earth” sculptures, undulating layers of fired clay, engage earth via multiple referents: tectonic shifts, hills and valleys, the organic swell of the ground beneath our feet. Life-sized, bronze sculptures of hands, always the artist’s own, sit atop the earthenware, often holding delicate porcelain and glass forms that draw attention to the fluidity and interconnectedness of Akashi’s chosen media. A full-wall video is comprised of vignettes of different kinds of simulated astronomical bodies, in particular the projected galaxy collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda. Surrounding the sculptural installation are a selection of crystallographs, a camera-less photographic process wherein the artist grows crystals on film and prints enlargements of these forms.
Deftly combining and contrasting scale, time, and material, Akashi’s Encounters form a crucible for the vast possibilities inherent in connection and collision. Encounters invites the viewer to consider the precariousness of their own material body and life, seeing concurrently both the insignificance and preciousness of one’s existence in the scope of the universe.
Kelly Akashi: Encounters is organized by Shamim M. Momin, Director of Curatorial Affairs. Generous support is provided by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag
Through January 14, 2024
Sophia Al-Maria’s work (born 1983 in Tacoma, Washington; lives and works in London) interrogates the enduring orientalist gaze and residual histories of resource extraction and colonial authority. Not My Bag brings together the artist’s recent trilogy of films for the first time, alongside new collages, which grapple with the violence of empire and animate the persistence of the creative spirit amid the ruins of crisis.
In the trilogy, Al-Maria weaves together personal lore and geopolitical legend by using film genre as her material. Her resulting films unspool the power dynamics of writing history with only unreliable narrators to tell it. The collages are complementary and explore the ways cultural inheritance, fragmentation, and memory shape narrative and a sense of self. In the site-specific installation Al Atlal, Al-Maria brings together photography, reference texts, film production ephemera, and other precious remains of her life and work. This non-linear storyboard maps Al-Maria’s capacious view of the world forged across national borders, offering a way to reckon with the past and find pathways to survive in the present.
Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Curator. Generous support is provided by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Media sponsorship provided by KUOW.
A/political Rocks
Through January 14, 2024
Drawn from the Henry collection, A/political Rocks explores the role landscape photography has played in shaping experiences of the American West, paying particular attention to among the most superficially banal and apolitical of landscape subgenres: images of rocks. Through critical attention to the shifting circumstances in which these photographs were made, consideration of the changing contexts of their display, and attention to the writing of their history this exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the power and politics of landscape, with works by Ansel Adams, Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, and Edward Weston, among others.
A/political Rocks is organized by Adam Monohon, former Curatorial Department Coordinator.
