Tschabalala Self: Bodega Run
Jan 11 - Jan 13 2024
Opening: Thursday, January 11, 5-8 pm
Book launch: Thursday, January 11, 6-8 pm
Installation opening hours:
Friday, January 12, 2-8 pm
Saturday, January 13, 12-8 pm
Swiss Institute (SI) is delighted to present a book launch and installation by Tschabalala Self to celebrate the culmination of the artist’s long-term project, Bodega Run. Initiated in 2017, Self’s Bodega Run explores these small, largely family-run corner stores as a central institution in the collective imagination and everyday realities of multiple communities of color in New York City. Bodegas emerged in the city with the arrival of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and have become an emblem of Manhattan’s diasporas. From Harlem, where Self was born and raised, to downtown Manhattan, where SI is located, bodegas continue to be spaces where local communities meet, organize and create their own local exchange economies.
To conclude her exploration of bodegas and the histories, subjectivities and desires attached to them, Self has released a dossier of new wall-mounted sculptural reliefs and prints inspired by the products they sell and their aesthetic organization. A publication with newly commissioned texts by some of today’s leading writers alongside Self’s vibrant visuals examines bodega culture from racial, gendered, and diasporic perspectives. Weaving a multiplicity of literary genres such as poetry, afro-futurism, fiction, family history as well as political and social criticism, the book includes contributions by Ayanna Dozier, Raven Rakia, Loryn Lopes, Naomi Fry, Roya Marsh, G’Ra Asim, Carolyn “CC” Concepcion, Joshua Bennett, and a conversation between Self and Sasha Bonét.
For three days in January 2024, SI will host a special installation of Self’s Bodega Run, including new paintings, sculptures, and wall-mounted reliefs, accompanied by a neon sign installation in the window, temporarily turning the building into a bodega imagined by the artist. Inspired by Self’s experience encountering bodegas in Harlem and across New York City, her textured, chromatically saturated works depict a range of Black figures among products frequently seen and acquired in these diasporic zones of commercial exchange and cultural convergence.
Tschabalala Self (b.1990 Harlem, USA) lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley. Self is an artist who builds a singular style from the syncretic use of both painting and printmaking to explore ideas about the black body. She constructs depictions of predominantly female bodies using a combination of sewn, printed and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self’s work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021); ICA, Boston (2020); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2019); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018); Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London (2017). Her work is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Astrup Fearnley, Oslo, Norway; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; New Museum, New York, NY; and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, amongst many others.
Image Caption: Ice Cream, 2017. Colored pencil, photocopies of hand-colored drawings, acrylic paint, Flashe (vinyl emulsion paint), fabric and painted canvas on canvas. 243.8 x 213.4 cm (96 x 84 in). Courtesy the artist, Pilar Corrias, London, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / Vienna
