From left, Artists Sable Elyse Smith, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Tschabalala Self
THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM Artists-in-Residence exhibition opened Sunday at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. Titled “MOOD,” the exhibition features 2018-19 artists Allison Janae Hamilton, Tschabalala Self, and Sable Elyse Smith.
Here is how the museum describes the show:
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MOOD explores site, place, and time as they relate to American identity and popular culture, past and present. The exhibition resituates the often trending social media hashtag (#mood), which describes moments both profound and banal: anything can be “a #mood.” Working across a range of media and materials, each artist manifests their perception of the present moment in the United States, while creating passageways to new worlds. MOOD maps out each artist’s psychic landscape, presenting distinct snapshots that travel through and beyond the fabric of digital culture.
About the artists:
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Allison Janae Hamilton (b. 1984, Lexington, Kentucky) layers video, haunting sculptural forms, found objects, and photography. For the exhibition, her immersive installation explores spirituality and mysticism as tied to the American South. Having grown in Florida where she earned an undergraduate degree at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Hamilton calls on the South’s coastal landscape to navigate the fault lines of wildness and civility. She lives and works in New York.
Tschabalala Self (b. 1990, Harlem) works with painting, printmaking, and assemblage to explore ideas surrounding the black female body. She is showing a new series, “Street Scenes,” which pays homage to the energy of the city, from the frenetic visual culture of bodegas to the communal experience of waiting at a bus stop. These large-scale printed, painted, and collage works create a cityscape that brings the vibrancy and energy of Harlem into focus. Harlem-born Self is based in New Haven, Conn.
Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986, Los Angeles) makes conceptual sculptures and two-dimensional works that interrogate the instability of economy, language, power, and the construct of social history. For the exhibition, she roots her collection of work in the visual vernacular of the prison industrial complex—visitor tables, coloring books made available in correctional facilities, and commissary ramen noodles used as a form of commerce. Smith’s treatment of these ordinary objects raises issues of labor, class, and memory, evoking new associations within the seemingly familiar. She splits her time between New York and Richmond, Va.
Part of a multiyear collaboration among the Studio Museum, MoMA, and MoMA PS1, the exhibition is being hosted off-site while the Harlem museum’s new home is under construction. The occasion marks the first time the artist-in-residence show is being presented outside the Studio Museum, since the institution was founded in 1968 and the residency program was established. CT
“MOOD: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2018-19” is on view at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, N.Y., June 9-Sept. 8, 2019
TOP IMAGE: From left, Studio Museum in Harlem 2018-19 Artists in residence Sable Elyse Smith, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Tschabalala Self. | Photo by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
BOOKSHELF
The catalog “Tschabalala Self” was published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at Parasol Unit, London. Sable Elyse Smith is among several contributors to “Sondra Perry: Typhoon Coming On.”
Sable Elyse Smith
SABLE ELYSE SMITH, “Spread,” 2018 (343 packs of chicken flavor Ramen, thirty-two bricks, 10 1/2 × 30 1/2 × 29 1/2 inches. | Courtesy the artist. Photo by Adam Reich
SABLE ELYSE SMITH, “Weight,” 2018 (digital scale, bank issued stack of 100 $1). | Courtesy the artist. Photo by Adam Reich
From left, SABLE ELYSE SMITH, “Coloring Book 34,” 2019 (silkscreen ink and oil sticks on paper, 60 × 50 inches). | Courtesy the artist. Photo by Adam Reich; SABLE ELYSE SMITH, “Coloring Book 31,” 2019 (silkscreen ink and oil sticks on paper, 60 × 50 inches. | Courtesy the artist. Photo by Adam Reich
Allison Janae Hamilton
ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON, “Wacissa (still),” 2019 (single-channel video projection). | Courtesy the artist
ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON, “Wacissa (still),” 2019 (single-channel video projection). | Courtesy the artist
ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON, “Wacissa (still),” 2019 (single-channel video projection). | Courtesy the artist
Tschabalala Self
TSCHABALALA SELF, “Red Dog,” 2019 (fabric, embroidered patch, newsprint, photo-transfer, gouache, acrylic, flashe and painted canvas on canvas, 96 x 84 inches). | Courtesy Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York. Photo by Zachary Balber
TSCHABALALA SELF, “Milk Chocolate,” 2017 (acrylic, watercolor, flash, crayon, colored pencil, oil pastel, pencil, hand-colored photocopy, and hand-colored canvas on canvas, 96 × 84 inches). | Courtesy Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York. Photo by Zachary Balber
TSCHABALALA SELF, “NYPD,” 2019 (painted canvas, fabric, flashe and gouache on canvas, 84 × 72 inches). | Courtesy Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York. Photo by Zachary Balber
