Paggi House

SUSSURRI. features works by Mary Ellen Carroll, Andy Coolquitt, and Phoebe Lickwar. The artworks are unified through infrastructure that is located in the built environment and also within, and occurring as nature. Taking the form of painting, sculpture, and photography, they focus on materiality and its implied ability to perform, leading to a sound or effect known as “sussurri.” The translation into Greek appears as psythis, and is the effect as in the sound of the wind blowing through trees, as a whisper. This sound is also described as existing between noise and music, symbolizing the space between disquiet and composure, improvisation and composition, and chaos and cultivation. And, in relation to the climate emergency it is the initiation of acts and materials of consequence and their ability to adapt or be adapted to the present. The essay, SUSSURRI. by Ruth Noack accompanies the exhibition.

SUSSURRI. is curated by Ruth Noack, the noted art historian, curator, writer, and educator.

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PUBLIC PROGRAMS 

Thursday, November 7, 2024
7 pm — The Frequency Domain 
A special opening performance by Li Harris

Friday, November 8, 2024
6 pm to 8 pm — SUSSURRI.  Panel Discussion
Introduction by Penny Liebmann Aaron with a
panel discussion moderated by Ruth Noack with
Mary Ellen Carroll, Andy Coolquitt, and Phoebe Lickwar

SUSSURRI. is open by appointment only. Please email:  pennyaaron.theloren [​at​] gmail.com to schedule a visit. 

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Cultural advisor for Paggi House — Penny Liebman Aaron oversees its public art initiatives and is the curator of the collection for the Loren Hotels. Penny Liebman Aaron has had a career in the arts for over three decades and includes their eponymous New York gallery.

The work of New York-based conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll (MEC, studios) occupies the disciplines of architecture, art, public policy, film/media, and technology and notably in the ongoing durational works — the opus prototype 180, PUBLIC UTILITY 2.0, and indestructible language. Carroll’s experimentation and oeuvre spans over four decades in a range of media that transcend genres and is dedicated to a social/political critique that explores the interactions of subjectivity, language, and power/knowledge. A recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Guggenheim Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, American Academy in Berlin, Rockefeller Foundation, and Graham Foundation, and in 2022 a Prix de Rome Fellow among others. Teaching, lecturing and public presentations on the built environment, art, and public policy are an important part of Carroll’s work and institutions have included the DIA Art Foundation, Columbia University, American Academy in Berlin, Rice University, Yale University, among others. Carroll’s work is in numerous public and private collections in the US and abroad. A major museum survey exhibition will open in October 2025 and is being curated by Rebecca Matalon for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Artist Andy Coolquitt builds environments and creates objects that synergistically engage with humans and their relationships. Born in Texas and currently living in Austin, Coolquitt is most widely known for Andy’s Place, a work started in the early 90s that is multifaceted and serves as a performance, studio, and domestic space for the artist as well as hundreds of other artists throughout the years and continues to the present day. Consisting of artworks that facilitate conversation and interaction amongst viewers, it exposes the social contract that can enhance and also limit the exchange between individuals within a community. Frequently working with objects salvaged from the street and their consideration, the works expose the practice of the everyday and the depreciation through use. The work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Notable exhibitions include: This Much at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, Austria; attainable excellence at AMOA-Arthouse in Austin, TX; and somebody place at Lisa Cooley in NYC. The work is in numerous private and public collections. 

Interdisciplinary artist, musician, and researcher Li(sa E.) Harris uses voice, theremin, electronics, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore healing in performance and living. The founder/creative director of the multidisciplinary creative arts studio Studio Enertia, Harris has been the recipient of numerous awards that include a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and the 2021 Dorothea Tanning Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Unlit: Sof Landin (Ballroom Marfa, 2023), D.R.E.A.M.= A Way to Afram (Diverse Works, 2023), and This is the Day (Lawndale Art Center, 2024).

Photographer and landscape architect Phoebe Lickwar is based in Austin Texas and is the founding Principal of FORGE Landscape Architecture, and an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The work centers on agroecology as a design practice for climate resilience and Lickwar is co-author of the book Farmscape: The Design of Productive Landscapes, which describes the history of agriculture within landscape architecture and reveals the diversity of current design practices that have shaped productive farms as sites of beauty, community, ecological conservation, remediation, and pleasure. The current project, Promiscuous Cultures, explores remnant and emerging practices of climate resilient farming in central and southern Italy. Lickwar holds degrees from Harvard College, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Rhode Island School of Design and is the recipient of the 2022 Garden Club of America Rome Prize in landscape architecture.

Internationally recognized curator, art historian, writer, and teacher Ruth Noack was most recently the Executive Director of The Corner at Whitman-Walker in Washington, D.C between 2019 – 2022. Noack curated documenta 12 with Roger M. Buergel (2007). Recent exhibitions include The Mental Body, Stay Alive to Life. Resilience in Times of Covid and When We First Arrived... Their series Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life (2018-20) was shown in Athens, Prague, Beijing and Stuttgart. Former president of AICA Austria, author of a monograph on Sanja Iveković, editor of Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis. Approaching the Museum with Migration in Mind (2013), Noack has published numerous essays and lectured internationally for more than 30 years.