NEW YORK, NY.- Inaugurating its summer 2018 season, the New Museum presents solo exhibitions by Hiwa K and Anna Boghiguian in its recently debuted South Galleries, along with a window installation by artist Aaron Fowler. These join the Museum’s lead exhibitions of the season, “Thomas Bayrle: Playtime” and “John Akomfrah: Signs of Empire,” which open on June 20; “Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: The House at Kawinal,” opening June 6 in the Lobby Gallery; and the Museum’s annual summer art and social justice residency and exhibition on the Fifth Floor, “The Black School x Kameelah Janan Rasheed,” opening May 23.

SOUTH GALLERIES EXHIBITIONS Hiwa K: Blind as the Mother Tongue
May 2–August 19, 2018
Drawing on vernacular forms and collaborative and performative actions, Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hiwa K (b. 1975, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq) makes work inspired by political events, chance encounters, oral histories, and his own experiences, including fleeing Iraq on foot in the late 1990s.

Hiwa K approaches his subjects with curiosity, pragmatism, and spontaneity, and his videos, performances, and sculptures speak to themes of political memory and belonging, as well as what the artist refers to as “placelessness” and “zones of possibility.” Hiwa K often distances himself from the standard position of the artist, instead appearing in his works as an interviewer, guide, bandleader, or political organizer. Many of his artistic projects take shape through self-education, informal collaborations, and exploratory trials.

“Blind as the Mother Tongue,” his first solo exhibition in the US, gathers a selection of works spanning the last decade that address experiences of estrangement and alternative modes of seeing, learning, and remembering. The exhibition includes the artist’s recent video Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) (2017), which debuted at documenta 14 in Athens and presents a powerful allegory for the experience of exile and migration. It also features several video works that take up the social, political, and economic histories specific to Sulaymaniyah, the artist’s hometown in Kurdish Iraq. In addition, Hiwa K created a new body of work comprising drawings as well as a sculpture—a forged steel morion, or colonial-style helmet, inverted like a cooking pot. These new works give shape to his recent investigations of early colonial encounters between the Inca and Spanish empires, and reflect on hybrid and hidden narratives, the circulation of culture and tradtions, and the perception—and misperception—of others.

The exhibition is curated by Natalie Bell, Associate Curator.

Anna Boghiguian: The Loom of History
May 2–August 19, 2018
“The Loom of History” marks the first US solo exhibition of ArmenianEgyptian artist Anna Boghiguian (b. 1946, Cairo, Egypt). Her raw and expressionistic works combine painting, drawing, writing, collage, and sculpture to contemplate the past and present through intersections of economics, philosophy, literature, and myth.

Her New Museum exhibition brings together a selection of recent cutout paper figures, mixed-media works on paper, collaged paintings in beehive frames, a large-scale painted sailcloth, and hand-painted texts on the gallery wall. Collectively, the works in “The Loom of History” address subjects that have long animated Boghiguian’s practice, including wars and revolutions, histories of materials and labor, and the ancient roots of modern imperialism. In particular, a number of works in the show address the economics of the cotton trade and its fundamental relationship to slavery in the United States—a violent and abusive history whose legacy has shaped racial inequities that persist today.

Since the 1970s, Boghiguian has traveled continuously, and her work has charted her impressions and observations of various societies, as well as her experiences of non-belonging. While her recent cutout paper figures and curtainlike paintings on sailcloth reference forms of popular storytelling or folk theater, her tabletlike drawings—a touchstone of her largely portable oeuvre—appear as a fragmented film script or exploded book. Other cutout figures and drawings in “The Loom of History” bear testament to the artist’s poetic and introspective investigations of sensory organs such as the ear, a motif that beckons the viewer to hark back to the past, or face its perennial return.

The exhibition is curated by Natalie Bell, Associate Curator.

STOREFRONT WINDOW Aaron Fowler: Bigger Than Me
May 2–August 19, 2018
Aaron Fowler (b. 1988, St. Louis, MO) creates elaborate assemblage paintings from discarded found objects and unconventional materials sourced from his local surroundings. Through intuitive layering of castoff furniture, oil and acrylic paint, and collaged elements including iridescent CDs, water bottles, LED lights, sneakers, and plastic bags, Fowler meticulously constructs hybrid tableaux infused with a sense of raw urgency. Taking compositional cues from American history painting and religious iconography, Fowler inserts both imagined and concrete narratives from his personal experience. Each work illustrates a poignant subject or event that holds significance for the artist, from portraits of incarcerated family members and friends lost in acts of violence to fantastical scenarios incorporating historical figures, role models, and public icons.

For the window of the New Museum’s 231 Bowery Building, Fowler presents “Bigger Than Me,” a new installation of his work. On a background of tiled mirror are two works: Lex Brown Town (2017) in the left window, and Miss Logan (2017–18) in the right. Like many of Fowler’s projects, both of these pieces are reflections on specific individuals who have been sources of inspiration for the artist. Lex Brown Town is an homage to Fowler’s fellow artist, collaborator, and MFA classmate at Yale School of Art, Lex Brown. Deploying materials including shirtsleeves, hair weave, and a Minions backpack, Fowler portrays Brown in orange, fighting off a wolf. This piece was inspired in part by a performance she staged at Yale, Run Bambi (2016), in which Brown describes finding her way through obstacles including racism and sexism. This composition sits atop nine monitors screening video footage of Fowler collecting Christmas trees as material for his work.

Miss Logan is a portrait of a young girl whom Fowler believed to have been his own daughter. While DNA tests eventually proved otherwise, the artist felt a strong connection to the child, and began this painting of her as a mermaid the day the two met. The title of Fowler’s installation, “Bigger Than Me,” is taken from a song by Detroit-born rapper Big Sean, in which he realizes that his life experiences and motivation to succeed are shaped by forces larger than himself. In relationship to Fowler’s work, the title also speaks to the artist’s process of allowing these superior powers to inform the creation of his projects— whether through the materials he comes across, incidental happenings in his life, or the relationships that shape him.

“Aaron Fowler: Bigger Than Me” is part of a series of window installations that relaunches the program originally mounted at the New Museum in the 1980s. This program included now-legendary projects by Jeff Koons, David Hammons, Linda Montano, Bruce Nauman, Gran Fury, and others.

This project is curated by Margot Norton, Curator.