Keli Safia Maksud, Detail of (our) making / unmaking / making / unmaking presented as part of worried notes, 2024. Photo by Leo Ng.
Closing Program: worried notes by Keli Safia Maksud
Date: Saturday, March 16th
Time: 4:00–7:00 pm
Event Schedule:
4–5 pm: Conversation with Keli Safia Maksud, Abigail DeVille, and Renee Gladman, moderated Jordan Jones
5–6 pm: Performance by improvisational bassist Brandon Lopez
6–7 pm: Closing reception
Join us in the gallery on Saturday, March 16th from 4–7 pm for a special event to mark the closing of the solo exhibition worried notes by Keli Safia Maksud.
The event begins with a conversation between Maksud, exhibition mentor Abigail DeVille, and writing mentor Renee Gladman, moderated by catalogue essayist Jordan Jones. Following the talk, improvisational bassist Brandon Lopez will perform in response to Maksud's sound installation, untitled bpm(s). Brandon Lopez is a double bass player and composer whose work ranges across genres and styles. He has been steadily gaining recognition as one of the most vital voices in contemporary experimental improvised music.
The event is free, and all are welcome.
About the Artist:
Keli Safia Maksud is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working in sound, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and embroidery. Concerned with histories of colonial encounters and the effects of these encounters on memory and identities, Maksud’s practice favors the space of in-between and its threshold – working toward destabilizing received histories in order to expose fictions of the state.
Maksud earned a BFA in Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, a Diploma in Art and Curatorial Studies at the New Centre for Research and Practice, and an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University. Her work has been shown at Goodman Gallery, ACUD Galerie, Salon 94, Huxley Parlour, the Bamako Biennial, the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Seoul, Galería Nueva, and the Biennial of Contemporary Art Sesc_Videobrasil. Maksud has been awarded fellowships and grants from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Council for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published in and for OCULA Magazine, the Swiss Institute, LEAP Magazine, and A Space Gallery.
About the Mentor:
Abigail DeVille (b. 1981, New York, NY) is known for her site-specific installations, sculptures, and performances that conjure vast universes from discarded objects and fragmented archives. In a seemingly boundless practice that transcends codified space, DeVille often sites her dense assemblages anywhere between museums, theaters, public parks, and city streets. By honoring and amplifying the memory of those that once used the everyday components preserved in her work, DeVille urges a reconsideration of what constitutes a historical record and who contributes.
DeVille’s most recent solo exhibitions include Bronx Heavens at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and In the fullness of time, the heart speaks truths too deep for utterance, but a star remembers at JTT, New York, NY (2023). She has also had solo exhibitions and commissions at Madison Square Park, New York, NY (2020-21); Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR (2021); the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (2021-22); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (2018-19); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2017-18); the Whitney Museum, New York, NY (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2017-18); and The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD (2016). Her work has been included in numerous group shows, and she has received awards and fellowships from United States Artists (2018); the American Academy in Rome (2017-18); Creative Capital (2015); Harvard University (2014-15); The Studio Museum (2013-14); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2012). DeVille teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and Yale School of Art. Her work is in many collections, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Kaviar Factory, Henningsvaer; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; Pinault Collection; and The Studio Museum (New York). DeVille received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was born in New York and works in the Bronx.
About the Catalogue Essayist
Jordan Jones is an arts worker living and working in New York. She is currently the Exhibitions Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI). She has participated in the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program (IATP), the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Museum Education Practicum, and the Center for Book Arts’ Creative Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers. She has also completed residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Arts Center on Governors Island and The Vermont Studio Center. Jones received a B.A. from Williams College.
About the Writing Mentor
Renee Gladman is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing, and architecture. She is the author of fourteen published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians—Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013) and Houses of Ravicka (2017)—as well as three collections of drawings: Prose Architectures (2017), One Long Black Sentence, a series of white ink drawings on black paper, indexed by Fred Moten (2020), and Plans for Sentences (2022). Recent essays and visual work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Granta, Harper's, BOMB Magazine, e-flux, and n+1. She has been awarded fellowships, artist grants, and residencies from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), and is a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize winner in fiction.
About the Performer:
Brandon Lopez (b. 1988) is a composer and bassist devoted to the exploration and execution of the creative musics. Since moving to New York City in 2013, he's found himself working with a myriad of the citi’s finest players and outfits (Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Marshall Allen, Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, Chris Corsano, Tyshawn Sorey, Joe Morris, Ingrid Laubrock, Tony Malaby, Tom Rainey, Mike Pride, as well as many others).
He currently leads the trio The Mess (Chris Corsano on drums and Sam Yulsman on piano) and performs as a soloist.
As a sideman, he's been dubbed "the ubiquitous." Some current work is with the Nate Wooley 4tet, William Parker's Little Huey Orchestra, Weasel Walter Large Ensemble, Leila Bordreuil Quartet for Bass trio and Cello Solo, The Jaimie Branch Trio, Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones, amongst many others.
He was recently awarded a grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Art for his guitar trio piece "Movement."
He attended New England Conservatory of Music and studied under Joe Morris.