Soft and Wet
Exhibition, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Project Space, New York City
September 18—November 16, 2019

Soft and Wet cites both Prince’s 1978 single, “Soft and Wet” and the seminal exhibition Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States, which was co-curated by Ana Mendieta, Kazuko Miyamoto, and Zarina at A.I.R. Gallery in 1980. These citations serve as reference points to help us locate fleshy, formalist impulses in the practices of contemporary artists that echo those of artists from the 1970s and 80s.

Working through sound, vision, vibration, touch, and breath, the artists in Soft and Wet activate multi-sensory responses that move beyond the linguistic registers of a singular voice and questions of individuated agency dominating discourses of representational art. The artists turn their formalism towards questions of flesh, fugitivity, and consent in relation to the nation-state, neoliberal capitalism, and the medical–industrial complex, while stretching formalism beyond the assumption of hegemonic subjects as the sole inheritors of its legacy.

The works in this show are experiments in, and explorations of, what it means “to consent not to be a single being” as Édouard Glissant writes. The artists in Soft and Wet think with and through one another, invoking the artist whose song gives the exhibition its title, to feel out the contours of other ways of being in relation. They join him in saying—We’d be so lost, in our mouths, the best, I feel it everyday (every way).

Participating Artists:
Arooj Aftab
Beverly Buchanan
Crystal Z Campbell
Caroline Key
Ana Mendieta
Andy Robert
Julie Tolentino
Zarina
Constantina Zavitsanos

In memory of:
Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015)
Ana Mendieta (1948-1985)
Prince Rogers Nelson (1958-2016)

 

Exhibition Catalogue:
Download PDF of Soft and Wet end_notes publication


Exhibition Events:
Soft and Wet: Screening, Lecture Performance, and Conversation between artists Caroline Key and Crystal Z Campbell, and curator Sadia Shirazi
October 19, 2019

Soft and Wet Publication Launch & Conversation featuring Kazuko Miyamoto, Howardena Pindell, Judy Blum Reddy, and Sadia Shirazi
November 16, 2019

These events are presented with support from ICI and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, with special thanks to A.I.R. Gallery.