Nari Ward: Ground Break

Running from March 28 to July 28, 2024, Pirelli HangarBicocca presents Ground Break, an exhibition dedicated to one of America’s foremost contemporary artists, Nari Ward. Since the 1990s, Ward has produced installation comprising everyday objects and re-purposed highly symbolic materials to make layered references to social issues and historical traumas—past, recent and contemporary.

In Ground Break, the artist stages a monumental choreography of works from the past 30 years alongside new productions, creating a highly engaging dialogue between sculpture, video, and installation. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a program of live performances in collaboration with other artists and musicians, invites reflection on some of the central issues of our time, such as social responsibility, inequality, exclusion, and migration, and offers possible visions of transformation and change.

Nari Ward (St. Andrew, Jamaica, 1963; lives and works in New York) creates layered works by interweaving and juxtaposing found elements that allude to various social and political issues, addressing aspects of identity, race, justice, and consumer culture. In his poignant and provocative installations, videos, and sculptures, the artist takes discarded objects found in unlikely places such as abandoned buildings, streets or parking lots, and imbues them with new meanings and genealogies, revealing forgotten histories and geographies in his complex and unique narratives.

Ground Break, curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, explores this aspect of Nari Ward’s research with a selection of projects focused on collaboration and performativity. The retrospective offers an in-depth exploration of the artist’s career, presenting more than thirty works in the Navate and Cubo spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, from historical and seminal works that have never been reinstalled, to new productions conceived especially for the exhibition. The show unfolds around the large-scale installations that Ward created between 1996 and 2000 as sets for the Geography Trilogy a project by the leading contemporary choreographer, Ralph Lemon. This collaborative work, developed over ten years, invites reflection on notions of conflict and cultural mixing, starting with the traumatic and enduring effects of racism and colonialism. For the first time, the works Geography Bottle Curtain (1997/2024), Geography Pallets (1997/2024), Geography Bedsprings (1997/2024), and Geography Temperature Curtain (1997/2024) are presented in an exhibition setting, establishing a new conceptual choreography with the other works, the space, and the visitors’ own bodies.

In Ground Break (2024), the work that gives the exhibition its title, the artist is interested in the idea of the “street memorial,” which he describes as a devotional and spiritual space of exchange, not connoted by religious symbolism, but made so by the collective memory of a community. Commissioned by Pirelli HangarBicocca, the installation is a new and expanded version of an earlier floor work by the artist, Ground (in Progress) (2015), which consists of about 4,000 copper-clad bricks placed on the ground to compose an abstract pattern with symbolic meaning. The work is also conceived as a stage for performances in collaboration with artists and musicians that will take place throughout the duration of the exhibition, as well as for further works to be displayed on its surface. In addition, the title of the exhibition itself, “Ground Break,” is intended to highlight Nari Ward’s exploration of periods of disruption and interruption that appear unstable and precarious, yet are capable of generating hope, alternative memories, and new possibilities for existence beyond history and the temporal conventions of past, present, and future. 

Moreover, three historical videos will be shown together for the first time and on LED screens: Father and Sons (2010), Jaunt (2011), and Spellbound (2015). Themes and images related to Nari Ward’s personal history, colonial history, and contemporary mechanisms of power are intertwined and spread throughout the exhibition space. Their combination offers a profound analysis of the concepts of social justice, nationality, care, sacrifice, and belonging.

Catalog
The exhibition will be accompanied by a monograph that presents the most recent critical studies of Nari Ward’s practice, exploring in depth aspects of performativity, sound, and time-based practices that have emerged from the collaborative exchange of the artist’s work. The book includes essays from international scholars and critics Jessica Bell Brown, Dieter Roelstraete, and Christina Sharpe, along with thematic contributions by Naomi Beckwith, Adrienne Edwards, Chiara Lupi, Giovanna Manzotti, Tatiana Palenzona, Teodora di Robilant, and Bianca Stoppani. The volume also features a conversation between Nari Ward and Ralph Lemon, and a dialog between the artist and the curators of the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca.

Pirelli HangarBicocca an institution founded in 2004, was relaunched in 2012 by Pirelli, which has been a founding partner since its inception. In recent years the exhibition space has consolidated its role as an art center, attracting an international audience with shows that stand out for their high curatorial standards and great visual impact, and thanks to its offer of unique exhibition projects. The spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca also host the permanent installation The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015 by Anselm Kiefer, which has become a reference point for visitors from all over the world, and the sculpture La Sequenza (1981) by Fausto Melotti.