New ICA At VCU Will Present New Works By Rashid Johnson, Jonathas De Andrade And More This Fall

The new Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Richmond's first institution devoted to contemporary art, today announced it will present two exhibitions this fall featuring site-specific commissions and installations by artists Rashid Johnson, Abbas Akhavan, Jonathas de Andrade, David Hartt, Julianne Swartz, and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Opening on October 17, 2018, Provocations: Rashid Johnson, the first of an ongoing annual exhibition series responding to the ICA's building designed by Steven Holl, and Hedges, Edges, Dirt, a survey of international contemporary multimedia artists, will continue to explore issues of imminent political and social relevance. Related programming will engage local and international audiences with artist-led performances, film screenings and conversations.

More information on the upcoming exhibitions follows below:

PROVOCATIONS: RASHID JOHNSON

October 2018-August 2019

For the inaugural Provocations, artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977) will create a new, large scale site-specific installation responsive to the ICA's distinctive interior, creating a pyramid-like steel structure that Johnson will fill with a selection of plants, artifacts, shea-butter sculptures, books, textiles, and video, continuing motifs from recent projects. Audiences are encouraged to walk through the structure, immersing themselves and inhabiting areas Johnson intended for both contemplation and performances. Throughout the run, the ICA will activate the work with a regular series of intimate, live performances in which local and international musicians, poets, and artists will respond to Johnson's work.

HEDGES, EDGES, DIRT

October 2018-January 2019

Hedges, Edges, Dirt presents new and recent projects by artists Abbas Akhavan, Jonathas de Andrade, David Hartt, Julianne Swartz, and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Each artist will show a single work that explores the nuanced and complicated ways we relate to our architecture and identity with conceptual and immersive installations. This international group of artists deploy play, beauty, and poetry to complicate and reimagine relationships among nature and culture, bodies and spaces.