Artist Interview Video PORTFOLIO
Stephen Hamilton on Indigo
Artist Stephen Hamilton talks about his project Indigo at the ICA Watershed in East Boston (on view Jul 3 – Sep 6, 2021), traditional dying and weaving methods, and the unrecognized historical contributions of West Africa to indigo use in the Americas.
Credits: Co-Producer, Second-Camera
Eva LeWitt's Vibrant Wall Sculpture
Eva LeWitt’s vibrant, handmade sculptures are fashioned from everyday commercial and industrial materials. Influenced by the particular shape of the museum’s architecture, "Untitled (Mesh Circles)," on view from March 20, 2021, to Oct 23, 2022, is a monumental sculpture made of bands of colorful coated mesh fabric. LeWitt’s intuitive material arrangements play with unresolved tensions: between transparency and opacity, gravity and weightlessness, abstraction and decoration.
Credits: Co-Producer, Second-Camera
Studio Visit: Tschabalala Self
Artist Tschabalala Self, whose largest exhibition to date is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (Jan 20 – Jul 5, 2020), talks about her materials, process, inspiration, and the characters she depicts in the layered artworks she creates from fabric and thread.
Credits: Co-Producer, Second-Camera
Studio Visit: 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize
The following videos visit the studios and working spaces of four featured artists included in the 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, on view Aug 21 – Dec 31, 2019. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize is central to the ICA/Boston’s efforts to nurture and recognize local artists, showcase exceptional artwork, and support a thriving local arts scene.
Helga Roht Poznanski (b. 1927, Tartu, Estonia) is a watercolorist, painter, and fashion designer who expresses a strong sense of color, composition, and spatial architectonics in her prolific practice. Poznanski fled Estonia in 1944 for fear of Soviet repression, moving to Austria, Canada, New York, and ultimately Boston, where she graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She speaks here about working on her art every day, fleeing Russian forces, staying original, and why there's no life without art.
Lavaughan Jenkins (b. 1976, Boston) is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. The exhibition featured more than 30 of his standing, kneeling, and “duchess” figures—works built of oil paint that engage with contemporary fashion as well as racial and sexual identities. He speaks here about creating "three-dimensional paintings," taking inspiration from Goya, and how he ended up becoming an artist (and not a football player).
Rashin Fahandej (b. 1978, Shiraz, Iran) is an Iranian-American artist, independent filmmaker, and graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work centers on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating social change. Included in the exhibition was a video and sound installation based on her multi-platform project "A Father’s Lullaby," which highlights men’s role in raising children and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Josephine Halvorson (b. 1981, Brewster, MA) makes art from observation in relation to a particular object and place. Transcribing her perceptions in real time, she connects with the world around her through the medium of paint. The exhibition featured new large-scale paintings made in places with which she is deeply connected: her Berkshires home and studio and an old mining site in Death Valley, Utah. Halvorson is Professor of Art and Chair of Graduate Studies in Painting at Boston University.
Credits: Co-Producer
John Akomfrah: Purple at the ICA Watershed 2019
Co-commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and making its U.S. premiere at the ICA Watershed, Purple is an immersive six-channel video installation by the acclaimed artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah (b. 1957, Accra, Ghana).
Akomfrah draws from hundreds of hours of archival footage, combining it with newly shot film and a hypnotic sound score to address themes related to the implications of climate change across the planet and its effects on human communities, biodiversity, and the wilderness.
Sited in the post-industrial ICA Watershed building, Purple resonates deeply with Boston Harbor and its current and historical maritime industries. Speaking from the Watershed, Akomfrah discusses the impetus behind the work, its relevance today, the complexity of its soundscape, and bringing the work to life in this reclaimed space.
Credits: Co-Producer
Studio Visit: Huma Bhabha’s Monumental Bronze
See how artist Huma Bhabha created the monumental and surprising bronze sculpture "Benaam," on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston March 23 – May 27, 2019, and featured on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018. Benaam was part of the exhibition "Huma Bhabha: They Live," the largest survey of the artist's work to date.
Credits: Co-Producer
Nina Chanel Abney: ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall
Artist Nina Chanel Abney describes her artwork as "colorfully seductive, deceptively simple investigations of contemporary cultural issues." Watch her giant site-specific mural at the ICA Boston come to life and hear her talk about how she plans works, what they mean, and what she wants them to achieve. Nina Chanel Abney's work is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston from Jan 17, 2019 - March 15, 2020.
Credits: Co-Producer
William Forsythe’s Choreographic Objects
The ICA presents the first comprehensive American exhibition of performative objects, video installations, and interactive sculptures of the internationally celebrated choreographer William Forsythe.
World renowned, Forsythe is counted among the foremost choreographers of our time. For over four decades he has created productions that redefine classical ballet’s vocabulary, and his groundbreaking approach to choreography, staging, lighting, and dance analysis has influenced countless choreographers and artists. Since the 1990s, parallel to his stage productions, Forsythe has developed installations, sculptures, and films that he calls Choreographic Objects. Blurring the lines between performance, sculpture, and installation, his Choreographic Objects invite the viewer to engage with the fundamental ideas of choreography.
These videos were available on tablets installed alongside the works throughout the galleries for accessibility purposes. Also published online was a set of 360 video tours of these works.
Credits: Co-Producer, Audio