Emerson Contemporary

If, Then: Technology and Poetics,
2024-01-19 13:30 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | On line, ZOOM
Learn from visual artist Kameelah J. Rasheed in this satellite workshop

Join us for Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s satellite workshop (conducted over zoom), in partnership with John Hopkins University. In If, Then: Technology and Poetics, Kameelah explores the relationship between writing constraints and algorithmic scores (dubbed wayward sentences).

This workshop will be conducted over zoom. You can RSVP or attend the workshop using this link.

Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Rasheed thinks conceptually about text, type, and printed matter and uses publishing as a platform to engage and enlarge conversations with others. Her work invites important questions about the materiality of text, such as, “What is the shape of a failed sentence?” or even to quote Fred Moten speaking to the work of Renee Gladman, “Is there an underground railroad in the sentence?” These questions are central to the artist’s practice.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores writing practices across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. Curious about the poetics and possibilities of loss, ruin, and failure in the reading and writing process, Rasheed explores Black knowledge production and fugitivity. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants – Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.

Exhibition hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm.

Artist Reception Kameelah Janan Rasheed
2024-01-23 17:00 - 19:00
Join us to celebrate the brand new exhibition of “Kameelah Janan Rasheed: all velvet sentences as manifesto, Like a lesson against smooth language or an invitation to be feral hypertext,” a multimedia solo exhibition featuring visual artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed (American, born 1985) on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from January 23 – March 23, 2024.

Rasheed thinks conceptually about text, type, and printed matter and uses publishing as a platform to engage and enlarge conversations with others. Her work invites important questions about the materiality of text, such as, “What is the shape of a failed sentence?” or even to quote Fred Moten speaking to the work of Renee Gladman, “Is there an underground railroad in the sentence?” These questions are central to the artist’s practice.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Lucid Dream, still, 2024

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores writing practices across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. Curious about the poetics and possibilities of loss, ruin, and failure in the reading and writing process, Rasheed explores Black knowledge production and fugitivity. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants – Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.

Exhibition hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm.

Writing With Word Games (**NEW DATE)
2024-02-26 14:00 - 16:00 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
Learn from visual artist Kameelah J. Rasheed. NEW DATE: MONDAY, 26, 2-4pm, FEBRUARY.

Join our artist in residence Kameelah J. Rasheed in a Writing With Word Games workshop.

Register for this workshop over here.

Writing With Word Games, a text score workshop, Friday, February 26, 2-4pm. Registration required: Eventbrite

Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA.

Get out of your way and learn to write with games, constraints, and algorithms. The workshop’s purpose is not to create a perfect piece of writing; rather, it is an invitation to get a bit feral and messy as we pull language into our orbit. Each participant will leave with a writing prompt created by another attendee.

i am not done yet, 2022. Solo at Kunstverein Hannover (Hannover, DE) Archival Inkjet Prints, Vellum, Xerox Paper, Acetate, Plexiglass, Acrylic, Watercolor, India Ink and Oil Stick Painting, Video

The multimedia site-specific installation combines new video drafts and existing video works from the last three years. All created using some form of a writing and video editing constraint, these works live alongside several 2D works also created using constraints to explore the agility and limitations of language. With an investment in Black experimental poetics, non-linear cosmologies, and fugivity, Rasheed asks, “What can be captured through writing? What is lost? And how can this inevitable loss be an invitation to consider other modes of communication?”

Kameelah J. Rasheed's Book Launch (NEW DATE)
2024-02-27 16:30 - 18:00 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
Attend the artist’s Scratch Disk Full launch event. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED DUE TO ARTIST ILLNESS to TUESDAY, FEB. 27..

Join our artist in residence Kameelah J. Rasheed for the launch of her book, Scratch Disk FullAttendees will receive a complimentary copy of the publication.

Scratch Disks Full asks, in the spirit of Sankofa: What did you leave behind? What would happen if you went back and got it? Scratch Disks Full is a publishing project for those with leaky sensory gating, sprawling interests, kinetic brains, and “too many ideas.” We publish the excess, the dirty data, the spillage, the noise, the leftover, and the unfulfilled.

A scratch disk is a hard disk used as a workspace to store data temporarily. In applications like Adobe Photoshop, the scratch disk is used to hold the data being edited. When an error reads “… the scratch disks are full.” it means there is not enough space on the drive to perform the upcoming task. The users need to find space elsewhere or end the process; they are left holding the excess energy of an unfulfilled action.

Scratch Disks Full is a publishing project producing readers, workbooks, and lo-fi playthings exploring the excess of an exhibition, piece of writing, lecture, performance, or even other publication. By excess, we do not mean process work leading up to a final work; we literally mean the embodied experiences you could not give yourself over to due to spiritual unreadiness, the sentences you had to blunt because there was not enough time for further editing; the feral idea that blossomed during a performance and began to shape you as much as you shaped it.

This offering will explore the excess of the current exhibition — notes, diagrams, excerpts of writing, and other leftovers.

Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores writing practices across all species,states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. Curious about the poetics and possibilities of loss, ruin, and failure in the reading and writing process, Rasheedexplores Black knowledge production and fugitivity. She creates sprawling,“architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints;performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to bedetermined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants – Experiments with Google; and a 2021Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.Her recent solo exhibitions include KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). In 2024, she will have a solo exhibition at REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA). Rasheed is the author of five artists’ books:in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing,2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions,2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring theStacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is an adjunct instructor at the Cooper Unionand Barnard College, a Critic at Yale School of Art, Sculpture, and an instructor at theSchool for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consultingbusiness that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions indesigning expansive and liberatory learning experiences.

Rasheed is represented by NOME Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

Lecture-Performance with Kameelah J. Rasheed
2024-02-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Walker 202, 120 Boylston Street Boston, MA, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116, United States
Learn with our visual artist in residence!

Join our artist in residence Kameelah J. Rasheed in a lecture-performance workshop conducted at Emerson College.

In this lecture performance, Rasheed will offer a live annotation of her 2024 keynote lecture at the CODEX Foundation conference. In this live annotation, Rasheed will respond to past and future versions of herself in conversation with ideas of translation, wayward writing, and Lucille Clifton’s spirit writing.

This event is proudly supported by Emerson College’s Public Art Think Tank (PATT)

Location is Room 202, Walker Building, 120 Boylston St. Boston, MA 02116. Registration is required for guests without an Emerson ID. Register for this free workshop over here.

About Kameelah Janan Rasheed

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores writing practices across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. Curious about the poetics and possibilities of loss, ruin, and failure in the reading and writing process, Rasheed explores Black knowledge production and fugitivity. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; and other forms yet to be determined. Most recently, she is a recipient of a 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants – Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.

Her recent solo exhibitions include KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). In 2024, she will have a solo exhibition at REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA). Rasheed is the author of five artists’ books: in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing, 2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021). She is an adjunct instructor at the Cooper Union and Barnard College, a Critic at Yale School of Art, Sculpture, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences.

Rasheed is represented by NOME Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

Un-monument Call to Work: Augmented Reality Artist Workshop
2024-03-30 12:00 - 2024-04-16 17:00
Image credit: Elisa Hamilton, sketching using the Hoverlay app. during the pilot workshop in 2021

Emerson Contemporary, is announcing an augmented reality artist workshop designed to support artists in gaining access to the skills and technology needed to either translate previous work, or create new work, in the medium of augmented reality (AR).

The workshop takes place 10 a.m. – 2:30pm, on five Saturdays: May 4- June 15, 2024. *no workshop on Memorial Day weekend.

The goal of the incubator is to provide training opportunities for artists who have traditionally faced an “access gap” due to the high start-up costs of these design tools and the cultural barriers within the new media art field, primarily affecting women, LGBTQ artists, Latinx, and BIPOC artists. The program provides a stipend, assistance with the production process, technology exploration and mentorship. In turn, by providing support and access, we aim to expand the demographics of artists working in AR.

Ten artists from the greater Boston area will be invited to participate in this program. Each artist received a stipend of $750 to participate and to compensate for their time and energy and offset costs for transportation, child care, or lost work to remove an additional potential barrier to this resource.

Those interested can attend virtual Q&A sessions on April 2 at 6 p.m. or April 3 at 12 p.m. on Zoom.

The written question deadline is Tuesday, April 9 at 5 p.m. and the application closes April 16 at 5 p.m.

Information for the Q&A sessions and application can be found here.

This program is funded by an Un-monument: Transformative Public Art Grant from the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. This opportunity is open to all professional artists, including individuals, and artists who operate as for-profit businesses and nonprofits.

Water Memories: A Happening...
2024-04-16 17:00 - 19:00
Join us to celebrate a multi media installation environment created by Zhiyao Ding, Mila Jafarnejad, Alexander Nezam, Nikita Potnis, Marcus Santos, Yangyanyun Tang, Siqi Xiong, and Yishu Yu whose work is the culminating project from the Film and Media Arts graduate installation art course “Space, Place, Image, Sound.” Location: Huret and Spector Gallery, please enter on the 7th Floor.

Although we don’t remember it, every newborn human being develops in the amniotic fluid of their mother. Our first interaction with the external world is to leave the water and breathe land’s air. One of the criteria for exploring a planet’s habitability is evidence of water, because without it life cannot live. Water exists in many forms: oceans, rivers, clouds, snowflakes and even inside our bodies.

Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto studied the molecular structure of water and discovered that when water was exposed to different human emotions the molecular structure of water changed. He realized that the water we drink, use and interact with every day has memory. Water remembers.

This exhibition explores many modes of interacting with water including memories of water, the biological and cultural significance of water. How would it feel to submerge yourself in water again? Fear? death? cleansing? or a warm embrace? After all, every drop of water once belonged to the sea, and all life will eventually meet again as one.

Transforming Boston: Art and Technology Incubator
2024-05-01 12:00 - 2024-06-30 19:00 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
A workshop series conducted by Michael Lewy

Transforming Boston: Art and Technology Incubator is our public-facing artist training and mentorship initiative, which offers access to new media technology for artists to either translate previous work or create new work. The incubator serves practicing artists who have faced obstacles due to the high start-up costs of these design tools and the cultural barriers within the new media art field. Ten artists from the Boston area have been invited to participate in this year’s program focused on Augmented Reality and develop their skills while designing a project.

This weekly confluence of ideas & creative exploration features guest lectures by Nicolas Robbe, Lauren Moffett, and Liz Nofziger. The goal of the 2024 incubator is to offer training opportunities and access to technology for artists to either translate previous work or create new work in the medium of augmented reality (AR). The program provides assistance with the production process, technology exploration and mentorship.

The 2025 cohort will focus on projection mapping.

off the pedestal
2024-08-01 00:00 - 2024-10-05 23:59 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
off the pedestal is a group exhibition in the Media Art Gallery, comprising contemporary artists whose work addresses the national conversation around monuments featuring visual artists Laura Anderson Barbata, New Red Order, and Paula J. Wilson.

View exhibition documentation.

This exhibition is on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from August 1 – October 5, 2024. The exhibition is free and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6 pm. This exhibition is part of Emerson Contemporary’s Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories, a multi-year initiative that includes exhibitions centered on monuments, several public art installations, and a technology incubator.

Curated by Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury and Curator of Special Projects Shana Dumont Garr, off the pedestal speaks directly to the national phenomenon of the removal of Confederate and other racist monuments in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Although monuments are generally presented as permanent, timeless, and expressive of universal values, this exhibition proposes that public memory could be more effectively addressed and activated through ephemeral expressions.

off the pedestal is supported by the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture (MOAC) program “Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston.” It is a city-wide initiative that aims to transform the nation’s commemorative landscape to ensure collective histories are more completely and accurately represented.

off the pedestal is further supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Laura Anderson Barbata’s multidisciplinary performance work Indigo is a call to action in response to the violence and murder of Black persons at the hands of the police. A group of sixteen resplendent characters clad in hand-dyed fabrics, woven details, and ornate stitching, many standing at the height of stilts, powerfully demonstrate the textile art aspect of Barbata’s vision.

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

Paula J. Wilson’s performative video Living Monument and 2D wall work Thyself monumentalize Black female bodies through dramatic scale and bold gestures. Her work elevates embodied histories and reminds us that joy and celebration are crucial parts of resistance.

Works featured in this exhibition include:

New Red Order, Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality, HD video (video still), 2020

A two-channel video Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality by New Red Order (NRO), a public secret society that works with networks of informants and accomplices to create grounds for Indigenous futures. Crimes Against Reality focuses on two public sculptures by James Earle Fraser — End of the Trail (1894), a statue originally intended to be installed on the California coast at the scale of the Statue of Liberty, and the statue of Theodore Roosevelt (1939) that was removed from outside the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, in 2022 — both of which commemorate the origin myth of America.

Little Jaguar (Laura Anderson Barbata) and Diablos (Jarana Beat). Intervention: Indigo, Bushwick, 2015. Photo: Rene Cervantes

Laura Anderson Barbata Intervention: Indigo presents a call to action to serve and protect in response to police violence. The point of departure is the color Indigo, a dye used around the globe that has been associated with protection, wisdom and royalty. Created in in collaboration with the Brooklyn Jumbies, Chris Walker and Jarana Beat, Indigo was performed first in Brooklyn and again in Mexico City in 2020 in collaboration with muca Roma, Chris Walker, Los Diablos de la Costa de Guerrero Los Rebeldes de El Capricho, Elizabeth Ross, Danza UNAM and Pro-Alterne Teatro. The work is a call to action to serve and protect, and of protest in response to the violence and murder at the hands of the police of Black people living in the United States and all over the world.

Paula J. Wilson fuses wide-ranging techniques and media with her observations of the natural world, where it is a matter of survival to make space for oneself to live, love, and make art. Recurring themes of feminine power, natural life systems, and art-making itself converge under the umbrella of regeneration and change. Narrative artworks that place feminine subjects in positions of power. Her expansive practice forcefully proclaims her place in the (art) histories she engages.

off the pedestal - Artist Reception
2024-09-17 17:30 - 19:30
Come celebrate off the pedestal, a multimedia group exhibition featuring visual artists Laura Anderson Barbata, New Red Order, and Paula J. Wilson. This exhibition is on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from August 1 – October 5, 2024. The exhibition is free and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6 pm.

Laura Anderson Barbata, Indigo, 2017

Curated by Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury and Curator of Special Projects Shana Dumont Garr, off the pedestal speaks directly to the national phenomenon of the removal of Confederate and other racist monuments in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Although monuments are generally presented as permanent, timeless, and expressive of universal values, this exhibition proposes that public memory could be more effectively addressed and activated through ephemeral expressions.

Laura Anderson Barbata’s multidisciplinary performance work Indigo is a call to action in response to the violence and murder of Black persons at the hands of the police. A group of sixteen resplendent characters clad in hand-dyed fabrics, woven details, and ornate stitching, many standing at the height of stilts, powerfully demonstrate the textile art aspect of Barbata’s vision.

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

Paula J. Wilson’s performative video Living Monument and 2D wall work Thyself monumentalize Black female bodies through dramatic scale and bold gestures. Her work elevates embodied histories and reminds us that joy and celebration are crucial parts of resistance. This exhibition is part of Emerson Contemporary’s Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories, a multi-year initiative that includes exhibitions centered on monuments, several public art installations, and a technology incubator.

Artist Talk: Laura Anderson Barbata
2024-09-18 17:00 - 18:00 | Media Art Gallery
As a part of Laura Anderson Barbata’s work in Emerson Contemporary’s off the pedestal multimedia installation, the artist will be giving a talk at the Media Art Gallery on September 18th, from 5:00-6:00pm (doors open at 4:30 pm).

Barbata’s inspiring performance work Indigo is a call to action in response to the violence and murder of Black persons at the hands of the police. A group of sixteen resplendent characters clad in hand-dyed fabrics, woven details, and ornate stitching, many standing at the height of stilts, powerfully demonstrate the textile art aspect of Barbata’s vision. Come celebrate off the pedestal, a multimedia group exhibition featuring visual artists Laura Anderson Barbata, New Red Order, and Paula J. Wilson. This exhibition is on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from August 1 – October 5, 2024. The exhibition is free and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6 pm.

Laura Anderson Barbata, Indigo, 2017

Curated by Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury and Curator of Special Projects Shana Dumont Garr, off the pedestal speaks directly to the national phenomenon of the removal of Confederate and other racist monuments in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Although monuments are generally presented as permanent, timeless, and expressive of universal values, this exhibition proposes that public memory could be more effectively addressed and activated through ephemeral expressions.

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

Paula J. Wilson’s performative video Living Monument and 2D wall work Thyself monumentalize Black female bodies through dramatic scale and bold gestures. Her work elevates embodied histories and reminds us that joy and celebration are crucial parts of resistance. This exhibition is part of Emerson Contemporary’s Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories, a multi-year initiative that includes exhibitions centered on monuments, several public art installations, and a technology incubator.

How to Commit Crimes Against Reality: ARTIST TALK with New Red Order
2024-09-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, United States
*Doors open at 5:30pm

“Do you want to realize your fullest potential? Be your truest self? Act with confidence? Attract abundance? Alleviate anxiety? Experience clarity? Know your purpose? Be the change you want to see? Be truly present? Experience real freedom? Change the world? Be a part of the solution? On some level, we all want to feel this way, but sometimes in our globalized, capitalist, settler-colonial society it feels impossible. Which is why the New Red Order is developing a dynamic system to help our accomplices achieve all of this and more. This sneak peek of our free introductory video, Never Settle, will tell you what you need to know to take control of your life today!”

As a part of New Red Order’s work in Emerson Contemporary’s off the pedestal multimedia installation, the artist group will be conducting a workshop on September 27th, from 2-3:30 pm at Emerson’s Media Art Gallery.

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

A "Give it Back" Workshop With New Red Order (NRO)
2024-09-27 14:00 - 15:30 | Student Performance Center, Little Building, 80 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116, United States
Give it Back Workshop

New Red Order (NRO) will unpack their “Give it Back Program” which recruits, normalizes, and promotes the ongoing practice of voluntary land return from settlers back to Indigenous peoples through a multiplicity of swerving artistic and political strategies including: advertising, network creation, promotional videos, public art, performance and organizing. NRO will work with students to help devise strategies for how their own work can expand past the limitations of art and into the world to create material changeNew Red Order will be conducting the workshop on September 27th, from 2:00 – 3:30 pm at Student Performance Center, Little Building, 80 Boylston St. RSVP your spot at the workshop right here.**RSVP required for non-Emerson guests

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

Louis Cameron: NOW IS THE TIME
2024-10-22 00:00 - 2024-12-14 23:59 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
Emerson Contemporary Presents: Billboards, posters and text-based works in “Louis Cameron: Now Is the Time” Exhibition explores the civil rights movement, gun violence, and hip hop culture.

Emerson Contemporary proudly presents Louis Cameron: Now is the Time, featuring billboards, posters and text-based works that explore the civil rights movement, gun violence and hip hop culture. It is underway, on view through December 14, 2024 at Emerson College’s Media Art Gallery in the heart of downtown Boston.

The free exhibition features several large-scale, wall-mounted vinyl text pieces from the ongoing Hip Hop Onomatopoeia series, a body of work that explores the conversation on gun violence within hip hop music. The works are text based, using the onomatopoeia of gun shots in hip hop songs as their reference. Cameron focuses on onomatopoeia because of its emotional resonance. Additional works from the Excavation and Displacement series are also on view.

Exclusively for this exhibition, Cameron designed a limited-edition take home poster titled

I Got To Have It, serving as a monument to Hip Hop culture and black music in Boston. It features a poem that peels back the layers of a song to reveal its connections to the history of Black music. Indicative of Hip Hop’s sampling culture, the poem is composed of a source song and the song titles that it sampled from.

Notably, these sampled songs touch on key points in the lineage of Black music such as James Brown, the Blues, and spirituals. The poster addresses urban realities and gun violence, the self-determination of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, and features the title of a song that refers to the African American spirituals such as Wade in the Water. The choice of typeface provides a reference to Hip Hop culture for the presentation of the poem.

Additionally, Cameron will present the “I AM… Portfolio” a group of posters addressing the recent violence against Black men and disregard for their lives in America. The title refers to rally calls and protest chants from the 1960s to the present. While violence against Black people is center stage in the current American cultural conversation, presenting a project by Black male artists – including Sanford Biggers, Rashid Johnson, and Shaun Leonardo, among others – offers valuable insights and counter representation.

Louis Cameron was born in Xxxxxxxx, Ohio, USA; lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He earned a B.F.A. from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia.https://www.louiscameron.com/

Woop! Woop! What’s That Sound Noise? (Interactive Lecture)
2024-11-18 00:00 - 23:59 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, United States
Presenting, a workshop on Hip-Hop culture with Dr. Brent Smith

Back in 1993, Hip Hop culture had reached twenty years of life and was boldly making its way through emerging adulthood. Its emcees and other artists challenged boundaries on self-expression, self-determination, and even community. The soundtrack of our societies and our lives would come to make way for insights wrapped into Sound of The Police (KRS One), U.N.I.T.Y. (Queen Latifah), C.R.E.A.M. (Wu Tang Clan), Now I Feel Ya (Scarface), How Many Emcees (Black Moon), Streiht Up Menace (MNC Eiht), and more. Hip Hop of 1993, arguably one of its greatest years, prompted or provoked us like a siren: Woop! Woop! What’s That Sound Noise?

Join us for a community talk led by Dr. Brent Smith as we explore this topic in relation to our current exhibit, Louis Cameron: Now is the Time.

Emerson Contemporary proudly presents Louis Cameron: Now is the Time, featuring Billboards, posters and text-based works that explore the civil rights movement, gun violence and Hip Hop culture. The exhibition features several large-scale, wall-mounted vinyl text pieces from the ongoing Hip Hop Onomatopoeia series, a body of work that explores the conversation on gun violence within Hip Hop music.

School of the Arts: Art Party
2024-12-05 00:00 - 23:59 | Emerson Contemporary
Art Party Alert!

Get ready for Emerson Contemporary’s FIRST EVER ‘Come Make Your Own Art’ Party! – Featured workshop artists are: Rikiesha, Robin Danzak, Jay Antidesign.

Join us for an evening of zines, posters, snacks, and creativity alongside fellow artists and dreamers. Relax, unwind, and let your imagination run wild! Let’s celebrate the power of art together. Don’t miss it! Also free pizza and hip hop music.

Supported by:Dean Kate Eichhorn, School of the ArtsLeonie Bradbury, Curator-in-ResidenceRobin Danzak, Health & Social Change Major

Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales: Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind
2025-02-04 12:00 - 2025-03-22 18:00 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, United States
New multi-media exhibition explores memory, history, and grief through science fiction and cinematic time travel.

On view in Emerson College’s Media Art Gallery, February 4 – March 22, 2025.

BOSTON, MA (January 15, 2025) – Emerson Contemporary is proud to present Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales, featuring multi-channel films and a dramatic sculptural installation by Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind. On view in our Media Art Gallery are As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night , an Arabic-language opera on loss, mourning and inherited trauma accompanied by a dramatic sculptural installation and a two-channel science fiction film, In Vitro. A special one-night screening of the science fiction film In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) and their latest documentary film Familiar Phantoms (2023) will augment the exhibition.

In much of their practice, Sansour and Lind use fiction as an imaginary mode to speak to the present in a manner that diffracts the highly charged political discourse on the historic and ongoing crisis in the Middle East. By ‘time traveling’ to both a faraway past and fictionalised futures, this exhibition explores how cinematic storytelling can open up new spaces for empathy and understanding of a shared human experience.

This exhibition is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Programming

Film Screening + Artist Conversation

Come view In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) and Familiar Phantoms (2023). Filmmakers Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind will be in conversation with Emerson Assistant Professor and Filmmaker Julia Halperin afterwards.

Film screening is co-presented with the RPM Film Festival and the Salem Film Fest.

Date: Tuesday, February 4, 7-9:30pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.

Location: Bright Family Screening Room, 559 Washington St. Boston, Ma, 02111

RSVP required for tickets: EVENTBRITE

Artist Reception + Conversation with Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind and exhibition curator Dr. Leonie Bradbury

Date: Wednesday, February 5, 5-7pm.

Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Ma 02111

About the artists: Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind are an artist duo who have collaborated on various films. They live and work in London. What underscores the significance of their work in the current context is the relationship between memory, trauma and the present to envision a more peaceful future. In 2019 they represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Larissa Sansour studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, KINDL in Berlin, Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut. Soren Lind is a Danish author and director and visual artist with a background in philosophy. Lind wrote books on mind, language, and understanding before turning to art, film, and fiction. Lind screens and exhibits his films at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide.

Film Screening + Artist Conversation
2025-02-04 19:00 - 21:30 | Bright Lights Theater, Paramount Center
Come watch In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) and Familiar Phantoms (2023) by filmmakers Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind at Emerson’s Bright Family Screening Room.

Join us after the screening for a conversation with the filmmakers, and Emerson’s Artist in Residence, Julia Halperin.

This screening is co-presented with the RPM Film Festival and the Salem Film Fest, and Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind’s exhibition at Emerson Contemporary is made possible by the generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Date: Tuesday, February 4, 7-9:30pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.

Location: Bright Family Screening Room, 559 Washington St. Boston, Ma, 02111

RSVP required for tickets: EVENTBRITE

This exhibition

Date: Wednesday, February 5, 5-7pm.

Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Ma 02111

About the artists: https://larissasansour.com/ Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind are an artist duo who have collaborated on various films. They live and work in London. What underscores the significance of their work in the current context is the relationship between memory, trauma and the present to envision a more peaceful future. In 2019 they represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Born in East Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour (PS/DK) studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, KINDL in Berlin, Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut. Soren Lind (DK) is a Danish author and director and visual artist with a background in philosophy. Lind wrote books on mind, language, and understanding before turning to art, film, and fiction. Lind screens and exhibits his films at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide.

Mirror Fields: A Series of Art-Led Reflections in the Media Art Gallery
2025-02-11 12:00 - 13:00
Special Gallery Event in Conjunction with Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind exhibition: Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales on view in the Media Art Gallery.

Join Rabbi Lisa Eiduson for a contemplative experience inside the newest exhibition Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind: Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales. On view are two films and a dramatic reflecting pool that invite meditations on memory, multigenerational trauma, and sorrow. Participants will be invited to take in a reading and some words of wisdom on the themes brought forth by the artworks and then are invited to share their own experiences, listen to others’ or simply sit in silence. Light refreshments will be served

12:00-1:00 pm on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 Led by Rabbi Eiduson

12:00-1:00 pm on Tuesday, February 25, 2025 Led by Rabbi Eiduson

Currently serving as the Interim Director of Emerson College’s Center of Spiritual Life, Rabbi Eiduson is a member of the clergy team at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, MA. There she teaches, leads services, officiates at life-cycle events, preaches, and organizes programming. She believes deeply in education and feels that learning, when applied, is the best avenue for promoting understanding among people.

Mirror Fields: A Series of Art-Led Reflections in the Media Art Gallery
2025-02-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Media Art Gallery
Special Gallery Event in conjunction with the Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind exhibition

Join Rabbi Lisa Eiduson for a contemplative experience inside the newest exhibition Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind: Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales. On view are two films and a dramatic reflecting pool that invite meditations on memory, multigenerational trauma, and sorrow. Participants will be invited to take in a reading and some words of wisdom on the themes brought forth by the artworks and then are invited to share their own experiences, listen to others’ or simply sit in silence.

12:00-1:00 pm on Tuesday, February 25, 2025 Led by Rabbi Eiduson

Currently serving as the Interim Director of Emerson College’s Center of Spiritual Life, Rabbi Eiduson is a member of the clergy team at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, MA. There she teaches, leads services, officiates at life-cycle events, preaches, and organizes programming. She believes deeply in education and feels that learning, when applied, is the best avenue for promoting understanding among people.

(Un)Making AI Worlds
2025-03-17 12:00 - 2025-03-22 17:00 | Huret and Spector Gallery, 10 Boylston Pl, Boston, MA 02116, Boston, Massachusetts, 02116, United States
Presenting, “(Un)Making AI Worlds”, curated by Ioana Jucan with Tushar Mathew, and Leonie Bradbury. The exhibition invites audiences to explore artworks emerging from the Data Fluencies Theatre Project team’s critical and creative interrogations of artificial intelligence and AI systems.

Blending theatrical conventions, choreographed movement, poetry, and artistic experiments with machine learning, (Machine) Learning to Be is a participatory, devised, hybrid multimedia performance experience that engages with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and their societal impacts. The performance features an interactive choreographic interface that aims to engage AI as embodiment technologies and human and AI characters that aim to convey the multifaceted nature of AI, its dangers and possibilities for our communities. Rooted in visions of decolonial AI, (Machine) Learning to Be seeks to challenge established systems of control and envision more equitable futures alongside AI technology.

Featuring artists Ioana B. Jucan, Tushar Matthew, David Mesiha, Aidan Nelson, Jae Neal, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, Yuguang Zhang, Gavan Cheema, Kite, the exhibition features the following events, activations and performances at Emerson’s Huret and Spector Gallery

March 18, 2025:4-6.30pm: Performance Activations and Artist Panel discussion moderated by Dr. Leonie Bradbury, followed by Reception

March 21st, 2025:2:00 pm: Secret Hyena activation

March 22nd, 2025:4:00 pm: Secret Hyena activation

The Data Fluencies Theatre Project (2022-2025) is an artistic research project that mobilizes theatrical performance’s potential to build data fluencies grounded in and honoring embodied experience. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team to develop artworks and co-create a participatory, devised, hybrid multimedia performance. Titled (Machine) Learning to Be, the performance engages with AI and algorithmic systems as it seeks to challenge established systems of control and envision more equitable futures alongside AI technology.

Mirror Fields: A Series of Art-Led Reflections in the Media Art Gallery
2025-03-18 12:00 - 13:00 | Media Art Gallery
October 8, 2025

Special Gallery Event in conjunction with the Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind exhibition

Join Rabbi Lisa Eiduson for a contemplative experience inside the newest exhibition Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind: Entire Nations Are Built on Fairy Tales. On view are two films and a dramatic reflecting pool that invite meditations on memory, multigenerational trauma, and sorrow. Participants will be invited to take in a reading and some words of wisdom on the themes brought forth by the artworks and then are invited to share their own experiences, listen to others’ or simply sit in silence.

12:00-1:00 pm on Tuesday, March 18, 2025 Led by Rabbi Eiduson

Currently serving as the Interim Director of Emerson College’s Center of Spiritual Life, Rabbi Eiduson is a member of the clergy team at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, MA. There she teaches, leads services, officiates at life-cycle events, preaches, and organizes programming. She believes deeply in education and feels that learning, when applied, is the best avenue for promoting understanding among people.

Launch Party Hidden Histories
2025-09-18 17:00 - 19:30 | Media Art Gallery
Join us for a spectacular event celebrating the launch of Emerson Contemporary’s public art exhibition Hidden Histories featuring art projects by Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah J. Rasheed. Artist will be present to discuss their unique works and visitors can partake in student led walking tours of the projects. Part of the City of Boston’s Un-Monument initiative to transform and expand Boston’s conversation around public art, monuments, and who should be memorialized and why.

Event Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery St. Boston, Ma 02111

Sue Murad: ASSEMBLE, Performance Action on the Boston Common, 2025
2025-10-03 12:00 - 2025-10-05 16:00
Sue Murad, ASSEMBLE, Reimagined Historic Walking Tours in Boston Common, 2025.

Sue Murad’s ASSEMBLE: Performance Instructions For Public Arrangement is a participatory performance that reflects on the ways we gather in public space—particularly the historic Boston Common—through the objects we bring with us or discover there.

Murad created a series of prompts inviting people into an embodied experience of the Common, creating a temporal micro-culture for each tour group in celebration of the right to peacefully assemble. The guided, interactive experience unfolds across the landscape, inviting participants into ephemeral arrangements shaped by memory, proximity, and shared attention.

Based in the Boston Common, Murad’s part of the Hidden Histories walking tour is inspired by the archival photos of people spending time together in the park from the nineteenth century to the present. The project bears witness to the many generations of people who have gathered together for rest and rallies, labor and loitering, play and protest. As such, Murad presents a contemplative investigation of the often overlooked First Amendment right to peacefully assemble.

ARTIST LED TOUR: Friday, October 3, 12-1:30pm.

ARTIST LED TOUR: Saturday, October 4, 12-1:30pm.

ARTIST LED TOUR: Sunday, October 5, 12-1:30pm.

Self-guided tours are available with the Hoverlay Augmented Reality application at channel: Un-monument: 1:30-4:00pm or anytime that works for you

Augmented Reality Public Art Walking Tour: Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill
2025-10-04 14:00 - 15:30
Saturday, October 4, 2025, 2-3:30pm

Join artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill on a special artist lead walking tour of their two new public art projects Glimpses of Glapion and The Black Boston Dream Oracle in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Location: Meet at the Boston Common Visitors Center, 139 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

Elisa Hamilton’s project Glimpses of Glapion will present a series of digital vignettes honoring the life and legacy of Louis Glapion. Glapion was a French, biracial hairdresser and barber who, together with his friend George Middleton, built and owned what is now considered the oldest extant house in Beacon Hill, located at 5 Pinckney Street. While more is known about Middleton, the artist’s research has uncovered glimpses of Glapion that speak to an interesting and noteworthy life based in Beacon Hill. Hamilton seeks to honor Glapion and enliven curiosity about his lived experiences in our city. The AR experience will be available on Hoverlay and accompanied by a research document designed for educational purposes.

Clareese Hill’s The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book written by Chloe Russel, a 19th-century Black woman from Massachusetts. By blending historical wisdom with future-focused fabulations, the Black Boston Dream Oracle will provide a unique space for reflection, healing, and imagining new possibilities for liberation and collective well-being through early Black feminist thought. The Oracle will be presented as an Extended Reality (XR) experience available on the Hoverlay application, accompanied by a web-based research document designed for educational purposes.

Hidden Histories Walking Tour with Curator Shana Dumont Garr
2025-10-08 12:00 - 13:30
Wednesday, October 8, 2025, 12-1:30pm This event has been rescheduled for Monday October 20, 12-1:30pm.

Join Hidden Histories Curator Shana Dumont Garr on a special walking tour to view Kameelah Jana Rasheed, Sue Murad, Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill’s new public art projects in and around the Boston Common and Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston, Ma.

Location: Meet at the Boston Common Visitors Center, 139 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

Lecture by Ruth Clemens: “Cultures, Technologies, and Media of the Sonic War Machine."
2025-10-14 12:00 - 13:00
Tuesday October 14, 12-1pm

Lecture by Ruth Clemens, “Cultures, Technologies, and Media of the Sonic War Machine.” Focusing on aural media and forgotten sound technologies from the early 20th century, this lecture presents a story of unexpected consequences that connects the international Dadaist avant-garde to 1940s Hollywood to military technologies and communication systems.

Clemens’ broad research interests cover film, cultural analysis, and comparative literary studies. Her work explores the intersections between textuality and materiality, media and politics, and language and technology. Her research interests are varied, with through-lines of critical post-humanism and the avant-garde across media, film, sound, and visual arts and the materiality of culture.

Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA

In Conversation: Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill and Ruth Clemens
2025-10-14 18:00 - 20:00
Hidden Histories Artists Elisa Hamilton and Dr. Clareese Hill will be in conversation with scholar Dr. Ruth Clemens. Moderated by Curator-in-Residence Dr. Leonie Bradbury for a discussion about the expansive role of speculative, cartographic, and de-colonial historical research methods.

Dr. Ruth Clemens’ broad research interests cover film, cultural analysis, and comparative literary studies. Her work explores the intersections between textuality and materiality, media and politics, and language and technology. Her research interests are varied, with through-lines of critical post-humanism and the avant-garde across media, film, sound, and visual arts and the materiality of culture.

Elisa H. Hamilton is a socially engaged multimedia artist who creates artworks and community-centered projects that emphasize shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects, and experiences. She holds a BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MA in Civic Media from Emerson College. Her most recent project Glimpses of Glapion presents a series of digital vignettes honoring the life and legacy of a historic figure Louis Glapion in the augmented reality application Hoverlay as part the the exhibition Hidden Histories and the City of Boston’s Un-monument Initiative.

Dr. Clareese Hill is a practice-based art researcher in XR and Immersive Media. She explores the validity of the word “identity” through her perspective as an Afro-Caribbean American woman and her societal role projected on her to perform as a Black feminist academic. Her most recent project The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book written by Chloe Russel, a 19th-century Black

Our artist centered public programming is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts. Hidden Histories is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-monument initiative, supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation

Hidden Histories Walking Tour with Curator Shana Dumont Garr
2025-10-20 12:00 - 13:30
Walking Tour: Join guide and curator Shana Dumont Garr to see the public art created by Hidden Histories artists Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Clareese Hill, Elisa Hamilton, and Sue Murad. We’ll see archival materials and ideas gleaned from old books and maps made public in poetic and slyly rebellious ways. Walk will take place in and around the Boston Common and Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston, Ma.

For more about the Hidden Histories exhibition click here.

Location: Meet at the Boston Common Visitors Center, 139 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

Our artist centered public programming is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts. Hidden Histories is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-monument initiative, supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

In Conversation: Clint Baclawski and Iwalani Kaluhiokalani
2025-10-21 18:00 - 20:00
Tuesday October 21, Talk from 6:30- 7:30pm, 6pm doors

In Conversation: Join multidisciplinary installation artists Iwalani Kaluhiokalani and photographer Clint Baclawski as they discuss space, time, color and motion in their work on view as part of Echoes of the Heart until December 13, 2025. Moderated by Dr. Leonie Bradbury.

Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA

Clint Baclawski works with photography, technology, light, and space. He received his BFA in Advertising Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Post-Baccalaureate from Bucknell University, and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in Design. He is Boston-based and has been an adjunct professor in Graduate Studies at MassArt since 2017. In 2022, Baclawski had residencies in both Venice, Italy, and Wassaic, NY.

He was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Grant in Photography in 2019. Baclawski exhibits his work extensively throughout the United States, and his work is included in many private and institutional collections including Children’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Whitehead Institute, and Fidelity. He has been published in Boston Art Review, FRAME (Amsterdam), Boston Home Magazine, Designboom, The Boston Globe, and The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Volume II (New York, NY). Clint’s studio is located in Boston’s South End.

Iwalani Kaluhiokalani is a Boston-based painter and interdisciplinary installation artist whose work centers movement. She holds a BFA in Painting with Distinction and Departmental Honors from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, where she also studied dance and performance art in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) program. She later continued studies in Laban Bartenieff Movement Analysis, completing a Laban Institute of Movement Studies program at Lesley College, Cambridge, MA.

Kaluhiokalani is part of Kingston Gallery, Boston and her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, The Pfizer Building and LabCentral of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, New Art Center Newton, and La Traverse/Catherine Bastide Projects in Marseille, France. She has created installation work for corporate collections and for the ACTivate residency at Boston Center For the Arts. Kaluhiokalani’s work is held in individual and corporate private collections.
