EAST LANSING, MICH.- Strength, resilience and fortitude exude from 6,000 steel butterflies and accompanying works in Esmaa Mohamoud’s “Complex Dreams,” on view through Feb. 16, 2025, at the
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (MSU Broad Art Museum). The site-specific exhibition, which reflects the artist’s experiences as a young Black girl, marks the Museum’s inaugural Signature Commission Series. The biennial series welcomes an internationally renowned artist to respond to the MSU Broad Art Museum’s Julie and Edward J. Minskoff Gallery, one of the most iconic spaces in the Zaha Hadid-designed museum, and the geographic and cultural context of the university.
“The Signature Commission Series is an invitation to dream together with us here at Michigan State University and to offer our audiences unparalleled encounters with art. I could not imagine a more visionary artist with whom to launch this series than Esmaa Mohamoud,” said Steven L. Bridges, interim director of MSU Broad Art Museum.
Mohamoud is well-known for her multi-disciplinary practice that addresses race, gender, body politics and other contemporary social issues. Her recent immersive installation offers a multi-sensorial experience that explores art’s transformative power to express perseverance in the face of great adversity. By pairing a physical experience with conceptual dimensions, the new commission at the MSU Broad Art Museum presented an opportunity for Mohamoud to push the envelope further, expanding her repertoire and taking meaningful, calculated risks while finding inspiration in the MSU Broad Art Museum’s architecture.
“I was very fascinated with the amount of steel that went into making the museum, and that use of steel externally led much of my response to be in steel as well,” said Mohamoud. “I was also really interested in the large window, an element that people would routinely avoid or cover. I really wanted to embrace that window, and it elicited all the ideas around the butterflies and the notion of freedom that runs through the work. The last thing that intrigued me were the two balconies on the second floor. Their presence really informed the height of the butterflies and how close they can be viewed at balcony level.”
The works in “Complex Dreams” speak to the artist’s powerful vision for the liberation of Blackness from the shadows of art history and society. “I’d Soar to the Sun and Look Down at the Sea, then Maybe I’ll Know What it Feels to Be Free” (2024) anchors the exhibition with 5,999 butterflies in the gallery and one mounted externally on the Museum’s roof, proof that people can escape their circumstances, continue to hope and fulfill their dreams. Mohamoud’s connection to butterflies dates to her childhood in London, Ontario. She often collected monarch caterpillars from the playground fence and kept them in her school desk, where she cared for them until they underwent metamorphosis.
“How Sweet It Would Be If I Found I Could Fly” (2024) posits a young Black girl at a fence reminiscent of Mohamoud’s childhood. Wearing baggy overalls, braids and gold hoop earrings, the child stands with her arms outstretched like a butterfly in front of the fence covered in plants. The artist grew up in subsidized public housing surrounded by a fence, a physical and mental barrier to reaching new opportunities.
“‘Complex Dreams’ takes the viewer into the reality many young Black girls, and subsequently Black women, face daily — the continual psychological effects of being in what feels like captivity for life,” commented Mohamoud. “The work serves as an illustration of how trauma holds you back long after it passes. Despite these realities, the exhibition offers a hopeful sentiment that freedom of the mind is achievable. Through the predominate use of steel, ‘Complex Dreams’ is a direct reflection of Zaha Hadid’s architectural design choices that cover the exterior of the museum.”
The commission is joined by Mohamoud’s immersive installation “Darkness Doesn’t Rise To The Sun, But We Do” (2020), on view in the adjacent William and Linda Demmer Gallery. This work invites visitors to enter a space filled with hundreds of jet-black, steel-cut dandelions, offering pathways for meandering exploration and opportunities for respite amongst the silhouetted flowers. Mohamoud found inspiration in the Black community’s response to the death of George Floyd. A dandelion’s resilience is akin to the tenacity the Black community maintained while boldly confronting social and racial injustice in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
“Complex Dreams” is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University as part of the Signature Commission Series and curated by Steven L. Bridges, interim director, senior curator and director of curatorial affairs. Major funding for the exhibition is provided by the MSU Federal Credit Union and the Eli and Edythe Broad Endowed Exhibitions Fund. “Darkness Doesn’t Rise To The Sun, But We Do” is on loan from Steelcase.
