On the occasion of Coby Kennedy's Pioneer Works exhibition 

Pioneer Works went behind the scenes with the artist as he worked on realizing his new installation, an eight-by-ten-by-six-feet sculpture that replicates the exact dimensions of a solitary confinement cell. Framed by steel, the plexiglas surfaces are etched with line renderings of the bed, barred window, and toilet that sparsely furnish the inhumane settings. ♦

In July 2021, Pioneer Works presented Coby Kennedy’s 

, an eight-by-ten-by-six-feet sculpture that replicates the exact dimensions of a solitary confinement cell. Framed by steel and lit from below, the plexiglas enclosure pays tribute to Kalief Browder, who at seventeen-years-old was arrested for a robbery he did not commit. Imprisoned without trial on Rikers Island for three years, the teenager was forcibly subjected to a solitary confinement cell for torturously long segments, totalling over 700 days, that caused lasting psychological trauma, resulting in suicide two years after his eventual release. Through creating this work, Kennedy hopes to shed light on the struggle that Browder and his family endured—and the resilience they displayed—and to incite meaningful contemplation on the devastating phenomenon of solitary confinement, and mass incarceration at large.


For Broadcast, Kennedy converses with activist, scholar and founding director of 

 founder Hank Willis Thomas. Together, they expand on the behind-the-scenes production of 

, and reflect on the intersections between art and activism.

Hank Willis Thomas

Coby Kennedy

Yeah. Preparing this project has been wild, because I was injured early on when 1,500 pounds of tempered glass fell on me. Biblically long story short, I was behind an A-frame and these eight-by-eight-feet panels just came down on me. There were about four or five of them, and I braced it with a few other people who were all trying to hold it up. All the pressure just went straight into my knee, and ripped my ligament off my kneecap. The glass shattered, and massive chunks came down on my shin. Getting the show ready—such a large sculpture—was an uphill battle, but Pioneer Works really jumped in. And I've been glad working with them, because they shared the focus and the vision.

Bryonn Bain


They say artists don't put their bodies on the line for the work. For the movement, you know what I'm saying? A man put his body on the line for it. That's what's up, much respect.

You know, people always say, “They put blood, sweat, and tears into the work.” I literally put my blood in, but I'm glad everything worked out the way that it did with the project.

Sam Giarratani

Let’s introduce ourselves, and each speak about how we describe our work as artists. I know you are all Pisces, so we’re going to flow like water.

I'm as Piscean as they come. Ever since I was a kid, I could feel what other people are feeling and, ever since my first interaction with Kalief's story, I've always felt it almost personally. It dug into a lot of my core fears, of losing my own agency. The project is my attempt to have people understand what’s going on in a country where many would think something like this can never happen.

It's happening every day. Can you share the quote that inspired the work?

“The way I looked at it, if I got to stay here… just to prove that I’m innocent, then so be it.” It was Kalief talking about what he was thinking back when they would keep him in solitary, and deny him court dates, continuously for three years. They would say, “if you plead guilty, we'll give you a lesser charge and you can go free today. You can go home today right now.” And he was like, “no.” It really shows his nonstop fight in the face of this overbearing, institutional monster that was trying to take away everything that he was. People forget that he was 17, 18, and 19 when this was going on. For a kid to have that much fortitude and clear perspective—that’s amazing. He fought for his truth and for his humanity, even up to the point where it became too much for him. He eventually took his own life, but so much of that strength comes through in that quote. You know, it's something that I don't think many of us would be able to do. For five years, he fought against things that would break most of us in five months.

That is such a crucial piece of this. And why it's so important that you are bringing your artistry to this story. It’s absolutely tragic that it was two weeks before his seventeenth birthday when he was arrested. He was a baby, you know what I'm saying? The fact that our children, our babies, are being put in cages in this way, in ways they wouldn't even allow animals at the zoo to be treated. It’s part of the tragic story of America.

It’s not just the tragic part of the story though. It's also the heroic part, and everything that Coby touched on—the fact that Kalief stood up in ways that are unimaginable for most people. 97% of the people who are offered a plea deal take it, and plead guilty for things that they often did not do. I relate to it specifically, because I've been charged with the same things that he was charged with. I've been wrongfully arrested more than once. I've been to Rikers many times. And although the time that I was wrongfully locked up was a drop in the bucket compared to his experience, it gave me some insight into what he was going through.

In addition to the fact that I spent about 10 years at Rikers, I was doing work with young folks to give them an opportunity to use the art center there. They have education opportunities with college students at Columbia, NYU, and the New School. When I watch 

, the brilliant film about his family, his life, and his struggles, you know, I'm remembering all those places. The Robert N. Davoren Center at Rikers, all these buildings that I was in for a decade of my life. It cannot be forgotten. I think it is the job of artists to make sure that these stories are told, and that we not only change the narrative but also tell these stories in the right way.

With the sculpture, I wanted to break past the watered-down perceptions that most of the public has about what happens during imprisonment, what happens with people that are awaiting trial. A lot of people out there have this idea of innocence until proven guilty, that you're not incarcerated until you have trial. You know America, we wouldn't do that. I don't want to get too deep into the entire structure of capitalist society, but it’s a money-making scheme. If you're not rich enough to pay, you're just going to stay in jail. It’s insane.

Something with your sculpture that really impacted me was the fact that you could see into the space, like a glass house. Too many people—millions of Americans—never look in, past the block and cement walls.

What you're talking about—the opaque walls of the prisons and the prison system, both physically and metaphorically—is the reason that so many people on the outside have a skewed perception of what goes on inside, and what it's like for human beings to be in this kind of institution. One of the intentions for making this solitary prison cell transparent was so that the viewer could see into it, and have a visceral reaction to what it's like for a human body to be kept in this enclosure. One of my main goals was to wake people who need to be woken up. I don't call myself an activist-artist, but I hope that my work inspires people to, at the very least, take note of reality and, at the very most, do something to change it.

I would love to hear from everybody about how they think about their work in relation to activism. It's interesting, Coby, that you say you're not an activist-artist but want certain outcomes when people view your work. I actually wanted to be an activist ever since I was 18. I read works by Che Guevara, and I was sold. You know, I want the public art that I make with other artists to activate social change, radical justice. To do more than to just incite dialogue.

I think that art and activism can be separate, different things, and that they can also go together. The elders in my life—the people who I aspire to be like, who raised me—were very much some of both. Harry Belafonte is a mentor of mine, and his mentor was Paul Robeson, who said that artists are gatekeepers of truth. Robeson talked about artists as people who don't necessarily lead the movement, but should be working to uplift movements for social justice. Art is many things. It can be just pure expression and extension of the soul; it can be a tool of resistance. I think about art as being like an alarm clock, right? It should liven your senses, wake you up to your humanity and the humanity of others. For me personally, working around prisons has been at the core of my art. I’ve dedicated most of my working life to the movement to end mass incarceration. That's my path.

Bryonn, I forget that we have Gina Belafonte in common. I'd love for you to say a few things about your art.

Absolutely. The production that I've done most recently, and had an opportunity to tour around the world, was developed in prisons around the country. It tells my story, and also a story of a friend who has been locked up for over 29 years in Texas for a crime he didn't commit. What got me excited to create the work—which brings together hip hop, spoken word, theater, Calypso and comedy, through our letters and our lyrics—was really his story, and the idea that I could use my public forum to shine some light on what's going on with my brother.

That power has always struck me as something truly amazing. Artists can get butts in chairs, bodies in the room. You know, Mr. Belafonte talks about the call he got from a guy named Martin when he was 26 years old, and Martin says, “I need some help with this movement thing that they want me to lead. And I know you can help me drive home the point.” Harry was the first person to sell a million records in 1956, and the movement needed help expanding consciousness and raising money. So there are very practical ways that artists can actually, you know, offer their support.

Sam, can you talk about your work as a producer on the Writing on the Wall project with us at For Freedoms?

As someone who wants to uplift other people's work in the public realm, I try to always question: what is the intention, who is your audience, and what is going to ultimately be the impact? One of my favorite things about working with artists and organizations like 

 is that I’m collaborating with people who wish to seek social and political change.

I've only scratched the surface with Negative Space, but what I’ve seen has opened my mind to new possibilities as an artist. So, I think that's part of the mission, part of the work—not just for other artists, but for our audiences in general—is to open minds to possibilities that we otherwise might not see as being there.

Coby, talk about the generational element of your work. Much like Bryonn, there are artists in your background.

Generational, yeah. I grew up with people who lived and breathed art. Both of my parents are practicing artists. My dad was a Dean of the Art Department at Howard University, so I grew up on that campus. I grew up thinking that this is what kids do. They go into these rooms and they draw big naked people standing on pedestals. I was on the art track throughout elementary and middle school, and went to an arts high school, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, in DC. From there, I went to college, and directly into the design and arts world. I feel lucky for that because of the way that things are coming around right now, where genres are disappearing and barriers are breaking down. You have all this cross-pollination and intersectionality between these creative fields and social, real life fields. Everything's melding into one another and that's what leads me to make the work that I make.

One time when I was six years old, I asked my mother if there were monsters in the world, and she said, “Yes, there are. You know, Coby, if you had come from a place where there were no horses and suddenly you saw a horse, you would think that horse was a monster.” In my mind, it was like [

]. She taught me that there were different perspectives that you could look at something from, and that common sense is only the agreed upon reality. So I feel lucky growing up in that bubble, coming from all those creatives.

I think that we're lucky to be at this time right now, where, like I was saying, everything's cross-pollinating. Information travels so fast and wide that the ability for a single person to have an effect on society is exponentially greater, I feel, than it used to be. Which brings me to what you were asking, Sam, about why I shy away from calling myself an “activist-artist.” I see myself as a ‘reality artist.’ They say, “learn the rules so that you can break them later.” I want to know what the reality is, so I can break those rules. So many of us carry the weight of the world with us. So much of societal ills come from those subjective realities, when we can't get on the same page. Often I see people who are pushing for activist art to try and tear down dogma, but they tear down that dogma by instituting their own dogmatic ideals.

I define myself as a reality artist if anything, and with this piece especially, I knew from the jump that there are a lot of people who do not want to see a jail cell in front of them. There are people in the activist world who would also be against the piece for aesthetic reasons, even though we’re pushing for the same thing. It was enlightening, at the first For Freedoms town hall, to hear about how people from the Red Hook Community Justice Center’s Peacemakers program were against the piece at the outset, because the question was, why do we need to have this put in front of us when there's already so much pain around this subject here? Afterwards, people had a chance to walk around the piece, feel it and understand it. They understood that there's a large contingent out there that needs to realize the realities of this. There's a certain risk, and there's a certain responsibility. There’s a fine line between impactful art and trauma porn. For artists like me, the kicker is the reaction and the connection with the viewer.

I think I'm getting slightly more comfortable with the title activist. I guess my activism and my creativity as an artist is about convincing the world, and myself, that this body is of value intrinsically. Not because it's special, but because I'm a human being. I guess every breath for me is an artist statement.

You just reminded me of the opening to Mos Def's 

, one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. And he said, people think they got value because they got money and expensive cars, fancy clothes on, are you valuable? Because you were created by God, you are, you know, because you're a human being, right? You know, that value that you have is intrinsic. I love that. And I also think, you know, that sometimes the conversations that make us uncomfortable are the ones we need to have most. We need to have a certain amount of transparency with what's happening in New York City. We're still paying 10 times the amount per young person to incarcerate folks at Rikers, compared to what we put into the public school system, right? You know, 10 times, over $150,000 to keep a teenager. The 16-to-19-year-olds locked up at Rikers Island. And in the public school system, in New York city, we're paying, you know, $10 to $15,000 per student. We need to look at that in a transparent way.

So I want to close with a final thought, that I think part of the brilliance of Coby’s work is that it brings transparency into the discussion in a way that is moving, in a way that is breathtaking, that is urgent, that honors the legacy and the activism of Kalief Browder. So I want to say thank you for the work, brother, and thank you for the opportunity to be in conversation with you all today.

Thank you, Bryonn. Thank you very much. I'm moved by every aspect of this project, initially by the subject itself, by Kalief and his story and everything that he went through. And I'm moved by everyone involved in the project, who helped facilitate it. Whenever I make work, one of my fears is that it will be taken at face value as art that, you know, somebody made to go in a gallery somewhere. But with this project, especially, I love that everyone involved saw beyond that.

I think one of the biggest measures of success of the piece is that it brought in a sustained partnership with Red Hook Community Justice Center and Pioneer Works itself. And you also were able to give Devon Simmons a platform to be a moderator, because he has this amazing ability to translate art. The whole concept of Negative Space is the space that you don't really see at the forefront, but it helps positive space come through. It’s the little relationships and connections that people make, which are not really public, that are important down the line.

I appreciate all the work that you do, Sam supporting us and bringing our work to reality to the public. And I'm very proud of Coby. How many years have you been working on this piece?

It first sparked off about three, four years ago.

Yeah, and it's a work that is both very personal, but it's also about all of us, in a way. It's like a specific mastery that you've spent, you know, decades perfecting. I’m also grateful for Pioneer Works for giving us space to have these conversations, and seeing that no artist's practice actually stops in their studio. The practice lives on and expands in the hearts and minds we touch in our work. So I'm in gratitude and joy and pleasure and fear and sadness about the opportunities we have, but also the work that we have to do. ♦

Visualizing Confinement

On the occasion of Coby Kennedy's Pioneer Works exhibition Kalief Browder: The Box, Pioneer Works went behind the scenes with the artist as he worked on realizing his new installation, an eight-by-ten-by-six-feet sculpture that replicates the exact dimensions of a solitary confinement cell. Framed by steel, the plexiglas surfaces are etched with line renderings of the bed, barred window, and toilet that sparsely furnish the inhumane settings. 

Prioritizing emerging, overlooked, or historically underrepresented artists, Pioneer Works exhibitions are often massive undertakings to achieve. This series offers a first-hand look at the finished product, chronicling the blood, sweat, and tears involved in realizing these large-scale efforts, as well as their conceptual underpinnings.

In Liz Magic Laser’s 2023 exhibition commissioned for Pioneer Works, 

, she explored the shaking body as both a symptom and a cure for psychic distress. For the first time, we're releasing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the performance and video artist created the new body of work, which traced the lineage of psychosomatic disorders through interactive videos offering therapeutic movement exercises. Simultaneously, Laser’s investigative report feverishly pursued the cure for hysteria as it uncovered mysteries at Paris’s Salpêtrière Hospital—a site widely regarded as the birthplace of modern neurology and psychology. Laser explains: “What drew me to hysteria was the refusal to perform, the refusal to behave.” ♦

In Liz Magic Laser’s 2023 exhibition commission for Pioneer Works, Convulsive States, she explored the shaking body as both a symptom and a cure for psychic distress. For the first time, we're releasing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the performance and video artist created the new body of work, which traced the lineage of psychosomatic disorders through interactive videos offering therapeutic movement exercises. 

Liz Magic Laser on Convulsive States

In the fall of 2022, Charles Atlas: The Mathematics of Consciousness debuted on the brick wall of Pioneer Works’ Main Hall. Combining original footage and segments culled from the artist’s extensive archives, the immersive video work extended across 100 feet of the institution’s interior architecture. The projected images flickered and toggled between numerical fantasies, dance sequences, abstract compositions, scientific ruminations, and internet memes—simulating and commenting upon memory, thought formation, and numerical expression.

Atlas has long been a pioneering figure in film and video, testing the limits of his medium and forging new territory through experiments in genre, style, and craft. Since his beginnings as filmmaker-in-residence for Merce Cunningham Dance Company during the early 1970s, Atlas has collapsed the barriers between dance, performance, and media, collaborating with a dynamic roster of creative figures to harness a distinctly ambidextrous position. ♦

Charles Atlas: The Mathematics of Consciousness

On the occasion of Laura Parnes’s exhibition 

, up through November 28th, Pioneer Works joins the artist in her Williamsburg studio and home for a behind-the-scenes look into her multi-platform, lens-based projects that craft darkly comedic narratives of trauma and repressed memory—often around mass-culture experiences and youthful rites of passage.

, shot between 2014-2019, is no exception; it casts real-life musicians, artists, and actors as bands on tour, and expands into a cross-generational, Trump–era commentary on contemporary culture and politics. ♦

On the occasion of Laura Parnes’s exhibition Tour Without End, up through November 28th, Pioneer Works joins the artist in her Williamsburg studio and home for a behind-the-scenes look into her multi-platform, lens-based projects that craft darkly comedic narratives of trauma and repressed memory—often around mass-culture experiences and youthful rites of passage.

Laura Parnes: Tour Without End

On the occasion of LJ Roberts’s exhibition and 

Carry You With Me: Ten Years of Portraits

, Pioneer Works joins the artist in their Brooklyn studio for a look into the process behind their long-term, ongoing project: 26 six-by-four-inch embroidered portraits of friends, collaborators, and lovers within New York City’s queer and trans communities. As much a tribute to the subjects as they are to the public and private places that provide safe spaces for vital exchange, these embroideries illustrate how politics, culture, and identity manifest in both visible and subtle ways through encounters in daily life. ♦

On the occasion of LJ Roberts’s exhibition and publication Carry You With Me: Ten Years of Portraits, Pioneer Works joins the artist in their Brooklyn studio for a look into the process behind their long-term, ongoing project: 26 six-by-four-inch embroidered portraits of friends, collaborators, and lovers within New York City’s queer and trans communities. As much a tribute to the subjects as they are to the public and private places that provide safe spaces for vital exchange, these embroideries illustrate how politics, culture, and identity manifest in both visible and subtle ways through encounters in daily life.

LJ Roberts, Carry You With Me: Ten Years of Portraits

Coby Kennedy | Kalief Browder: The Box

An intimate look at the motivations and intent behind the Pioneer Works exhibition Brand New Heavies. Curated by artists Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas—collectively known as Deux Femmes Noires—Brand New Heavies features monumental work in video, sculpture, and architecture by Abigail DeVille, Xaviera Simmons, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Together, the installations viscerally engage history, memory, place, pop culture, spirituality, and desire from a Black perspective.

Behind the Scenes with Brand New Heavies

Have we reached the end of capitalism? The rapid depletion of global resources could prove the need for an alternative economic model. This idea is further articulated in the political and social theory of accelerationism, which suggests that the expansion—and ensuing destruction—of capitalism is the only way to bring about radical social change. AVL’s body of work—largely made up of conceptual sculptures and architectural sites—is widely known for illuminating the connection between labor, power, and revolution and a potential new world order of scarcity and subsequent self-sufficiency. These works of art force viewers to posit the possibility of the end of capitalism. What, then, emerges in its place? When will that new economic system eventually break down under the inevitable cycle of creation and destruction that plagues the progression of civilization? In The CryptoFuturist, a fictional tribe of characters, the cryptofuturists, are living through an acceleration beyond capitalism and offering suggestions for economic alternatives through art, architecture, and design. A final question, then, remains: what is the role of the artist/designer in constructing utopias? Guests: Paola Antonelli, Timothy Furstnau and Andrea Steves, Answar Shaikh

The End of Everything: The Acceleration of Atelier Van Lieshout

Dutch sound poet and improviser Jaap Blonk give a tour of Atelier van Lieshout's The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth at Pioneer Works

Jaap Blonk in The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth

Gerard & Kelly: CLOCKWORK extends the artists’ inquiry of memory and modernist architecture in their ongoing project Modern Living, and marks the New York premiere of the film Schindler/Glass as well as new work commissioned by Pioneer Works.

Gerard and Kelly's Clockwork

For his largest-scale exhibition in the United States, The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth, AVL draws from two bodies of work that give the exhibition its name. They transform Pioneer Works into an immersive installation of sculptures and industrial machines. Central to the New Tribal Labyrinth series is Blast Furnace (2013), an imposing structure referencing Industrial Revolution-era furnaces traditionally used to produce steel. The sculpture also contains domestic elements such as a kitchen, toilet, and sleeping quarters. This environment is inhabited by an imaginary tribe of metalworkers, a “new tribe” with a visceral desire to return to the beginning of industry—the origins of Western culture, wealth, materials, and products. This tribe feeds off the heat, waste, and noise of their industrial utopia, setting the stage for the synthesis of human and machine. Some of the works in the New Tribal Labyrinth series express this synthesis through sculptural representations of sperm and reproductive organs doubling as lamps and furniture. They posit the human body as itself a kind of machine, endlessly procreating.

The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth

Port-au-Prince is a polyphonic city declaring its cultural history via multiple voices. While its infrastructure is deeply compromised, the gap between rich and poor is immense, and the 2010 earthquake destroyed many of its major buildings, Port-au-Prince continues to be one of the most vibrant and creative cities in the Caribbean. Hence, PÒTOPRENS is not simply a survey show, nor is it a comprehensive snapshot of contemporary Haitian art. It is an exhibition that uses the city of Port-au-Prince as a lens through which to view the chaotic intersections of history, music, politics, religion, magic, architecture, art, and literature— to enable the viewer to reflect upon the past and speculate about the future of this vital city and its country.

PÒTOPRENS: Jean Claude Saintilus

On August 8, 2018, Claudia Rankine, Jonathan Gray, Jennifer Uleman, and Julia Elena discussed the ways in which blondness (as a marker of whiteness) has developed mobility across racial and class lines in conjunction with our exhibition Stamped.

Claudia Rankine In Conversation

PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince brings together the work of over 25 artists working in the Haitian capital. The exhibition, on view September 7 to November 11, 2018, highlights Port-au-Prince’s many diverse centers of cultural production, informal street life, religious heritage, and mythologies to create a compelling portrait of a historically significant and intensely complex city in flux. Co-curated by Haitian-American artist and curator Edouard Duval-Carrié and British artist and curator Leah Gordon, PÒTOPRENS is a large-scale exhibition of sculptures, photographs, and films, accompanied by a garden installation of a recreated Port-au-Prince barbershop as well as extensive public programming. Port-au-Prince is a polyphonic city declaring its cultural history via multiple voices. While its infrastructure is deeply compromised, the gap between rich and poor is immense, and the 2010 earthquake destroyed many of its major buildings, Port-au-Prince continues to be one of the most vibrant and creative cities in the Caribbean. Hence, PÒTOPRENS is not simply a survey show, nor is it a comprehensive snapshot of contemporary Haitian art. It is an exhibition that uses the city of Port-au-Prince as a lens through which to view the chaotic intersections of history, music, politics, religion, magic, architecture, art, and literature— to enable the viewer to reflect upon the past and speculate about the future of this vital city and its country.

Pòtoprens

Anthony McCall’s sculptural works explore the intersections of light, movement, drawing and space, forming evanescent and ever changing three-dimensional forms that exist not only as “objects” in space, but as environments to experience. This panel discussion will consider the artist’s ‘solid light’ films and projections in relation to his own artistic career, as well as within the context of historical and contemporary developments in drawing, sculpture and cinema. Participants will include Anthony McCall; Johanna Gosse, Visiting Assistant Professor and CWCTP Scholar, University of Colorado, Boulder; Ed Halter, Director of Light Industry, Brooklyn; Branden W. Joseph, Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Columbia University; and Melissa Ragona, Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Critical Theory, Carnegie Mellon University.

Anthony McCall In Conversation

For the close of White Man On A Pedestal, artist Kenya (Robinson) will use performance as a tool for inquiry, questioning the life cycle of white male heteronormative supremacy. If every living thing dies, it begs the question: is our current system of privilege alive, or is it an energetic impulse, abiding by the law of physics? Is it an impulse towards artificial hierarchies that cannot be created or destroyed? Are we bound to witness only a change in form, repeating the essence of oppression, indefinitely? This contemplation is at the centerpiece of CENOTAPHIC – a jazz funeral for the #WHITEMANINMYPOCKET. A procession beginning at Red Hook Houses and culminating with a eulogy and repast at Pioneer Works seeks answers, or, at the very least a “conversation”. The procession will be led by (Robinson), leaving promptly from Red Hook Houses at 4:15pm, and the eulogy will be delivered by Amanda Werner, an activist known for their viral appearance as the Monopoly Man at the Equifax Senate hearing on Capitol Hill in October 2017. Please dress in mourning attire.

White Man on a Pedestal | Cenotaphic

As part of Doreen Garner's exhibition White Man On A Pedestal with Kenya (Robinson), she recreated the seven-feet tall statue of Sims in Central Park, encasing it in a thin layer of silicone. Once peeled, his ‘skin’ lies in situ on an operating table. In Purge, Garner will perform a vesicovaginal fistula closure on the Skin of Poneros. Several body cast models featured in her work Rack of those Ravaged and Unconsenting will also assist in this procedure. Using dissection as a means​​ to get to the truth​, ​the symbolic mutilation of Sims’s body on a surgical table seeks to undo​ his ​historically ​praised posture.

White Man On A Pedestal | Purge

White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), was a two-person exhibition by Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson) at Pioneer Works from November 10 – December 17, 2017. WMOAP questions a prevailing western history that uses white-male-heteronormativity as its persistent model. Both artists approach WMOAP from an individual practice that is responsive to their experiences as black women operating in a system of white male supremacy. At a time when removing Confederate statues—literally white men on pedestals—are cultural flashpoints of whiteness and class, Garner and (Robinson) play with the size, texture, and scale of white monumentality itself, referencing both real and imagined figureheads of historical exclusion. Through WMOAP, Garner and (Robinson) collaboratively re-enact and hold a funeral for oppression, while revealing the difficulties of making this work within an institutional setting that too often benefits from systems of oppression. While their conversation brings together a literal and figurative cycle of meat and bone, life and death, it also foreshadows an institutional approach to exhibitions where a vested, active interest in inclusion and community engagement are at the core of the institutional mission, not just in its rhetoric or publicity apparatus.

White Man On A Pedestal

Anthony McCall’s Solid Light Works displays vertical installations shown alongside their horizontal variants. Requiring over thirty feet of clearance from floor to ceiling, very few New York venues can accommodate these six-colossal works. A seminal figure of Expanded Cinema, McCall is well known for his “solid-light works.” It was a series he began in 1973 with the 16mm film Line Describing a Cone, in which a volumetric form composed of a beam of projected light slowly evolves in real, three-dimensional space. McCall regards these works as occupying a place somewhere between sculpture, cinema, and drawing: sculpture because the projected volumes must be occupied and explored by a moving spectator; cinema because these large-scale objects are not static, but structured to progressively shift and change over time; and drawing, because the genesis of each installation is a two-dimensional line-drawing.

Anthony McCall's Solid Light Works

Directed and produced by E.S.P. TV, this live broadcast event highlights the work, “Daytime Viewing” (1979-80) by Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom. Daytime Viewing is an extended narrative song, based on a casual analysis of daytime television drama and the audience phenomena such programming addresses. Performances by Erica Magrey with Liliou Barbier, Heidi Jien Jouet, Dana Bell with Sari Nordman, Johanna Herr, MV Carbon with Lily Benson, and Shana Moulton with Samantha Crabtree Special thanks to David Rosenboom, Jacqueline Humbert, and Tommy McCutchon, Unseen Worlds. The event coincides with the release of “Daytime Viewing” as an LP by Unseen Worlds.

E.S.P. TV, 'Daytime Viewing'

Pioneer Works is pleased to present Grand Ole Opera, a large-scale installation by Tennessee-born artists Willie Stewart and Brent Stewart. Raised by a strong matriarchy, Willie was born into a motorcycle club where all his male influences were indefinitely incarcerated. Brent was raised in a strict Christian household and is a filmmaker. They met in a bar years ago and connected over a shared interest in cinematic space—equal parts B-movies and home video memories. This exhibition, their institutional debut in the United States, also serves as a venue for a related series of noise, metal and rock concerts, staged within a revival tent. The soundtrack of this America is doom and sludge metal, Japanese noise music, rock, and psychedelic punk.

Grand Ole Opera

Pioneer Works is pleased to present WORK, E.S.P. TV’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United States. Directed by Victoria Keddie and Scott Kiernan, E.S.P. TV is best known for their live television tapings that feature experimental broadcast collaborations with underground poets, musicians, and artists via their mobile television studio. For WORK, E.S.P. TV makes Pioneer Works’ office staff and environment the subject of a six-week performative, televisual installation by relocating the organization’s second-floor, open-plan office to the first-floor’s main exhibition space. Surrounded by a de-centralized control room, the office doubles as both a dynamic sculptural set — painted partly in chroma blue and featuring movable walls, among other features — and the actual site for the staff’s five-day workweek. The staff’s “daily grind” will be mixed live, on-site, with custom video effects and commercial interruptions. Far from peddling in the sensational tropes of reality TV, WORK instead turns banal, day-to-day office routines and patterns — the movement of a chair, a co-worker getting coffee — into the improbable, playful content of a serial program to be broadcast weekly on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. E.S.P. TV worked closely with curator David Everitt Howe to envision this social experiment and exhibition, which responds to the building’s unique environment and tight-knit, collective office culture.

E.S.P. TV, 'WORK': Episode 5

E.S.P. TV, 'WORK': Episode 4

E.S.P. TV, 'WORK': Episode 3

E.S.P. TV 'WORK': Episode 2

E.S.P. TV, 'WORK': Episode 1

ON is a solo exhibition of new work and performance by Derrick Adams. Through large-scale, boldly colored mixed media collages, performance, sound pieces, and illuminated sculptures, ON continues Adams’ investigation of consumerism and the dramatization of black figures in entertainment and popular culture.

Derrick Adams, ON

Revolving around notions of mortality and immortality, the exhibition Redwood physicalizes Lowe’s eponymous film, her first feature. Commissioned by Pioneer Works, Redwood (2016) is a time-travel family drama featuring a young woman, ostensibly Lowe, receiving a memory transplant from her grandmother who is in a vegetative state in a Mnemonegenix Center. Due to her grandmother’s dementia and the limits of technology, time frames and characters are fragmented and conflated in her memories. Worn by all characters throughout different decades are hand-made masks that depict one woman aging from adolescence to obsolescence; the masks collapse Lowe’s identity with those of the other female family members, making character dynamics and plot lines intentionally ambiguous. Redwood surround’s Lowe’s film installation with a surreal landscape, comprised of a 30-foot, suspended Redwood tree, a large, sand-dune breast, and a steep hill-bed. In addition, masks and gloves from the film are displayed as a taxonomy of the film’s characters’ aging process.

Coby Kennedy | Kalief Browder: The Box

Exhibitions