Movements Toward Freedom
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
September 20, 2024 - February 2, 2025
Props, 2023
Watercolour, ink, graphite on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Audrey Yvette Washington
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) presents Movements Toward Freedom. The exhibition explores the power, possibility and vulnerability of bodily movement in contemporary life.
Linking physical and social definitions of movement, Movements Toward Freedom examines how the articulation of our bodies, collectively and singularly, informs and shapes a vital society. Showcasing recent work and new commissions that span genres of performance, sculpture, video, painting and installation, the exhibition considers the ways that physical movement plays an integral role in exercising personal and collective agency as a means for community-building, civic change and liberation, as well as serving as an antidote to strife and a vehicle for healing and care.
Exhibiting artists: Sadie Barnette, Ben Coleman, Elena Dahn, Karon Davis, Brendan Fernandes, Geovanna Gonzalez, EJ Hill, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, tara jae, Steffani Jemison, Liz Magic Laser, Carolyn Lazard, Francisco Masó, Senga Nengudi, Kambui Olujimi, Ronny Quevedo, Eric-Paul Riege, Davina Semo, Laura Shill, Naama Tsabar and Cosmo Whyte.
Overture, 2023
Plaster, steel, glass eyes, tulle, crown, and ice pack
Courtesy the artist and Salon 94
© Karon Davis
Overture, 2023
Plaster, steel, glass eyes, tulle, crown, and ice pack
Courtesy the artist and Salon 94
© Karon Davis
Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, Nevada) creates sculptures and multimedia installations that touch on issues of history, race, and violence in the United States, using materials as varied as plaster strips, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects. Drawing on her background in theater and film, Davis creates haunting tableaux inhabited by protagonists both historical and imagined. The figures are created using the artist’s unique plaster method, amalgamations of life-size casts taken from friends and family as well as her own body. The material reflects her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification practices, using wrapping to memorialize different bodies and their complex histories.
Photography: Barret Lybbert
Wading in the Wake, 2020
Beaded curtains, paint.
Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York
Photography: Barret Lybbert
Wading in the Wake (detail), 2020
Beaded curtains, paint.
Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York
Photography: Barret Lybbert
Cosmo Whyte (b. 1982, St. Andrew, Jamaica) employs drawing, sculpture, and photography to explore the intersections of race, nationalism, and displacement. His large scale drawings pose the celebratory body of Jamaican and diasporic communities in states of jubilation. His figures, adorned with gold leaf and black glitter, defy their colonial past, tearing it from their bodies through unbridled dance.
“Movements Toward Freedom considers questions about how we move - and move together - in the year 2024,” said exhibition curator Leilani Lynch. “Emerging from the disconnectedness of the pandemic era, the exhibition aims to ground viewers in their physical bodies, creating a dynamic space activated by performances and programs, while also inviting active participation from museum visitors.”
Time-based programming is core to the framework of Movements. The selected artists engender expanded notions of performance and movement into the artworks on view in the exhibition, over half of which will be activated during monthly programming of live activations, performances, and participatory events. This exhibition hosts the most accompanying programs of any project MCA Denver has organized to-date.
Mirror Bar, 2022
Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame,
holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024
Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Photo: Phillip Maisel
Mirror Bar, 2022
Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame,
holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024
Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Photo: Phillip Maisel
Mirror Bar, 2022
Neon, vinyl on mirror plexiglas in arched frame,
holographic vinyl upholstery, and glitter Plexiglas
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2024
Photo courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Photo: Phillip Maisel
Eagle Creek I, 2021
Archival pigment print photograph
with overlaid rhinestones
Courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Photo: John Wilson White
Eagle Creek I, 2021
Archival pigment print photograph
with overlaid rhinestones
Courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Photo: John Wilson White
Heartline, 2022
Wood, acrylic, and neon. 51 x 26 x 138 inches
Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly
joy studies (never ever giving up), 2022
Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches
Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly
joy studies (triple rainbow), 2022
Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches
Collection of Daniel Sager and Brian McCarthy
joy studies (lift), 2022
Acrylic and crayon on wood panel. 40 x 30 inches
Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly
EJ Hill is an artist born, raised, and based in South Central, Los Angeles. François Ghebaly said: "Widely recognized for his durational performance-based practice, Hill is equally accomplished in installation and object-based work. Grounded in lived experience, Hill’s recent paintings and sculptural installations center possibilities of healing, considering joy as a critical component of social equity".
Many artists in the exhibition – including Sadie Barnette, EJ Hill, Kambui Olujimi and tara jae – look to historical examples of radical spaces of gathering and togetherness in order to find inspiration and perspective, while other works by GeoVanna Gonzalez and Naama Tsabar act as platforms and structures that foster self-empowerment and creative expression.
The strength, vulnerability and resilience of the body are explored in many artworks in the exhibition, including examples by Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Liz Magic Laser, Ronny Quevedo, and Laura Shill. These artists borrow tropes, aesthetics and techniques from the athletic and fitness industries to investigate and critique contemporary wellness culture while asking us to think about what “fitness” means, especially when confronted with threats to social and political health.
Cámara, 2016
Still from filmed performance
Courtesy the artist
Brutas, 2021
Performance, at Arte BA Fair
Courtesy the artist.
Pendiente, 2024
Performance at PROA21, 2022
Courtesy the artist
Pendiente, 2024
Performance at PROA21, 2022
Courtesy the artist
Elena DahnCourtesy of the artist
Elena Dahn was born in Buenos Aires in 1980, where she currently lives and works. She graduated with a degree in Communication studies. She continued to study visual arts at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as in workshops and discussion spaces of prominent artists from Buenos Aires. Between 2009 and 2010 she completed the Universidad Di Tella Program for artists, under the mentorship of Jorge Macchi. In 2010 she won first prize in the Curriculm 0 Competition at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery. In 2011 she obtained a scholarship from the MNSEN Foundation and completed a postgraduate program at the sculpture department of the Royal College of Arts, London. She exhibited her work at art galleries, museums and art spaces in Buenos Aires, New York, Brazil and London.
Other artists like Senga Nengudi and Elena Dahn, foreground the experience of motherhood and birth through their works, highlighting the inherent elasticity and memory of skin.
Movements Toward Freedom features newly commissioned installation and performance works by Brendan Fernandes and Steffani Jemison.
Ballet Kink, 2019
Live performance, lighting, staging and DJ set
Courtesy the artist
Commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum, "Ballet Kink" combines the vocabulary of Ballet and S&M bondage. Dancers collaborate with rope masters to challenge their endurance and expand their repertoire. The work explores metaphors for: how do we find new freedoms within social and political restraints?
Contract and Release, 2019
Live performance and choreography for (3) dancers, scaffolding,
costuming, edition of (6) custom rocking chairs
Courtesy the artist
Commissioned by The Isamu Noguchi Museum, "Contract and Release" responds to the collaborations between sculptor, Isamu Noguchi and choreographer, Martha Graham. New sculptures by Brendan Fernandes and objects from the Noguchi collection are activated by performers and a Graham-referencing choreography.
The Master and Form II, 2019
Performance/Installation
Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Exhibition design in collaboration with Norman Kelley
The second iteration of the Master and Form was staged for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Master and Form explores the dynamics of mastery and discipline as embodied by ballet. The sculptural installation—comprising five structures that he calls “devices,” ten hanging ropes, and a central cage—is animated at times by a group of dancers. Both assisting and encumbering the performers, the minimalist objects enable poses that test their endurance in overt displays of physical tension and self-control.
Free Fall, for Camera, 2020
Digital. Duration: 13:47 minutes
Courtesy the artist
Free Fall is a large-scale, multimedia dance and video installation. Initiated by a Canada Council for the Arts, Special Projects, Canada 150 Grant, Free Fall explores the falling body as a metaphor for queer politics. The first phase of the project was Free Fall, for Camera, a film. Featuring a team of (16) dancers; a unique choreography in collaboration with Toronto’s Hit & Run Dance Productions; and an original soundtrack by Experimental Sound.
72 Seasons, 2021
Performance
Courtesy the artist
72 Seasons engages with ballet history to envision the same passages of time demarcated by seasons for the twenty-first-century. Initiating the project in the Lurie Garden within the City of Chicago’s Millennium Park, the movement-based piece brings together a group of dancers in acts of utilitarian choreography. Departing from a Western vision of phases, where the division of all perceptible change in our environment is collapsed into four categorical types, Brendan Fernandes encourages a deeper observation of humans’ relationship to the natural world.
Photograph by Kevin Penczak
Brendan Fernandes’ project manifests as a hybrid of sculpture, sound, a space for performances choreographed by Fernandes, and a platform for Denver’s dance community. The installation resembles the construction of a dance studio, incorporating the museum’s ergonomic “sprung” floor, in addition to familiar elements like barres and mirrors regularly used by dancers during class and rehearsal in preparation for performances. These practical forms are reimagined by Brendan Fernandes to invite professionals, enthusiasts, and interested visitors to move within the space. Etched mirrors adorning the walls and vinyl patterns on the floor provide scores that performers and visitors alike can follow. Additionally, the space is available for local dancers and companies to use for rehearsal. By offering the installation as accessible and open, Brendan Fernandes aims to address the scarcity of studio and performance space regularly experienced throughout the dance community.
Bound, 2024
HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min.
Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Bound, 2024
HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min.
Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Bound, 2024
HD video, color, sound. Duration 20:22 min.
Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Steffani Jemison’s commission builds from her intensive research into the politics of flight as they relate to Black liberation efforts. Her installation combines drawing, a recycled cyclorama (theater backdrop) to produce the effect of distance, and her video "Bound" (2024) to allude to the revolutionary and liberatory potential of physical movement. Steffani Jemison also stages a performance in the form of a play, titled "Flight Theater", at the museum’s satellite space, The Holiday, as an interdisciplinary meditation on untethering ourselves from earth; floating,drifting, and soaring; and the unexpected limitations of an omniscient point of view.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART DENVER
1485 Delgany St., Denver, CO 80202
