NEW YORK, NY.- Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is presenting Wacissa by Allison Janae Hamilton for the month of April as part of the organization’s signature Midnight Moment series in partnership with Marianne Boesky Gallery. Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.

In Wacissa (2019), Hamilton transports viewers through a series of rivers in her home region of North Florida. The rivers she navigates are all linked through the area’s Slave Canal, so-called as it was built via slave labor in the 1850s to aid the transport of cotton through the Florida panhandle. Filming from her kayak, Hamilton placed the camera into the water, plunging viewers directly into the river. In the resulting video, the audience’s senses are upended by the turbulent audiovisuals. Hamilton contrasts the untouched beauty of the underwater landscape with the remnants of the hurricane that devastated the region just a few months prior to filming. Debris can be seen floating in the water and fallen trees from the storm, inviting the viewer to consider the impact of climate change on communities within this landscape. Viewers in Times Square are invited to sync their phones to the underwater sounds of Wacissa via QR codes, which will be displayed throughout Father Duffy Square.

Allison Janae Hamilton was born in Kentucky, raised in Florida, and her maternal family’s farm and homestead lies in the rural flatlands of western Tennessee. Her relationship with these locations forms the cornerstone of her artwork and her interest in landscape. Using plant matter, layered imagery, sounds, and animal remains, Hamilton fuses land-centered folklore and personal family narratives into haunting yet epic mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today's changing Southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. In the context of Times Square, Wacissa calls to mind many of these shared environmental concerns that also face New York as a coastal city and invites viewers to reflect on climate change in an urban landscape.

Coinciding with the presentation of Wacissa, Marianne Boesky Gallery is presenting A Romance of Paradise, Allison Janae Hamilton’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery. For A Romance of Paradise, Hamilton presents new photographs, videos, and sculptural works that highlight the artist’s ongoing exploration of interwoven themes such as environmental justice, folklore and mythologies, and the traditions of communities living in vulnerable landscapes within the rural American South. A Romance of Paradise is on view March 27 – April 24, 2021 at the gallery’s 507 West 24th Street location in New York.

Allison Janae Hamilton (b.1984) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Her work often incorporates natural materials such as reclaimed wood, animal hides, and feathers. Hamilton fuses land-centered folklore and personal family narratives into haunting yet epic mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today's changing Southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. The artist’s commitment to the land is driven by her own migrations, from Kentucky, where she was born, to Florida, where she grew up, to rural Tennessee, the location of her maternal family’s homestead, and to New York, where she currently lives. Hamilton’s work connects the physicality of the landscape with the lived experience it carries, positioning landscape as critical to understanding both history and contemporary culture.

Allison Janae Hamilton has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA (2018) and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA (2018). She has further been featured in group presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; and the Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey. Hamilton has also participated in a range of fellowships and residencies, including with the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Fundación Botín; Santander, Spain. She is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Hamilton holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York.