Sonya Clark / MATRIX 184

February 6 – March 13, 2020

Using common materials, Clark creates sculptures that explore how our understanding of objects reveals our personal and collective attitudes. Focused on the Black experience in the United States, the artist often uses cultural symbols to grapple with the connections between history, racism, inequality, and social justice. Clark integrates a wide range of media in her work, including combs, copper pennies, beads, kente cloth, and hair, all of which, she says, “absorb our stories and reflect our humanity back to us.” For her MATRIX project, Clark presents a variety of “hair” works, including the series For Colored Girls, a rainbow that refers to Ntozake Shange’s award-winning play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1974), which has just returned to Broadway.

This exhibition was originally planned to be on view through September 2, 2020 but the museum closed March 14 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

VIRTUAL GALLERY

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

February 13 | Gallery Talk
March 8 | The Emily Hall Tremaine Lecture in Contemporary Art
March 14 | Film: Good Hair
March 14 | Hair Demonstration

Images from left: Sonya Clark, For Colored Girls…a rainbow (purple), 2019. Afro wig, combs, thread. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky; Jamilah Williams, Jah Braids, for Sonya Clark’s Hair Craft Project, 2014. Pigment print on archival paper. Courtesy Goya Contemporary, Baltimore. Photo by Naoko Wowsugi; Sonya Clark, Throne, 2016. Found salon chair, cloth, beads. Courtesy Goya Contemporary, Baltimore.