Exhibition Information:
October 7, 2022 - March 12, 2023

deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Lincoln, MA

Organized by Chief Curator Sarah Montross and Haley Clouser

Thumbnail image: Installation view of New Formations at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Image: © Mel Taing, 2022.

Installation view of New Formations at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

Through contemporary photography, video, and painting, this exhibition features human bodies in powerful athletic performance, ecstatic expressions of dance and collective procession. These artworks suggest our need for rituals, ways of gathering, and performing for ourselves and one another. With actions drawn from dance, sportsmanship, and pageantry, New Formations explores modes of kinship, alliance, and competition. Artworks on view convey disparities across race, age, and gender that shape how our bodies move through the world and are seen by others.

Featuring works by artists including Pelle Cass, Jaclyn Conley, Jeremy Deller, Alicia Framis, Dara Friedman, George Georgiou, Steffani Jemison, Tyler Mitchell, Senga Nengundi, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Heather Rasmussen

Works by these contemporary artists are shown alongside selections from a recent gift of vernacular photographs from the collection of Peter Cohen. These anonymous, amateur photographs highlight our collective attraction to capture ourselves joining parades, in dance formations, or staging “human pyramids” on the beach. Shown together with the contemporary artists, New Formations captures the need and broad appeal of relating our bodies to sculptural form.

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