Dell Hamilton

Jewett Art Gallery

January 26 - March 19, 2023

 

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Primarily recognized for her work in performance art, Dell Marie Hamilton also uses a variety of other media, including painting, drawing, photography, installation, and video, in addition to archival and curatorial practices. Her highly interdisciplinary practice is reflected in the way she follows threads of research and chance encounters to create pieces embedded with tangles of meaning. Ideas may be prompted by a photo found in an institutional archive, a metaphor from a Toni Morrison novel, materials from a failed project, research into a canonical Bruce Nauman artwork, lyrics from a Beyoncé song, work seen at a biennial, the history of a specific place, the work of Black women scholars in and beyond the arts, and more. Hamilton remains open to the information and histories around her, working intuitively until the piece begins to cohere and to create its own logic. Materials and gestures are chosen for their physical presence as well as their historical and cultural referents.

 

For the first half of the Spring '23 semester, Hamilton took up residence in the Jewett Art Gallery, utilizing it as a studio for the development of new work, rather than a static exhibition space. She returned repeatedly to the space throughout the course of the show, bringing materials in, rearranging them in new ways, experimenting with scale, suspension, and the occupation of space. Repeat visitors were able to see several artworks taking form, including large 2D wall works and video documentation of performances, and students were able to see the way that artwork can coexist with and emerge from seeming chaos. By putting the typically solitary work of the artist in their studio on public display, Hamilton made visible the challenges and questions that are embedded in the complex nature of art-making.

 

Dell Marie Hamilton has performed extensively throughout the New England area and is a recipient of the ICA/Boston's 2021 Foster Prize. Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Art in America, and NKA: Contemporary Journal of African Art as well as in the anthology AntiBlackness, edited by Moon-Kie Jung and Joao H. Costa Vargas, which was published by Duke University Press in 2021. She is a recipient of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum's 2021 inaugural cohort of the Charla Fund, a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative that provides grants to Latinx artists. She also works on a variety of research and curatorial projects at Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

 

This exhibition was on view in the Jewett Art Gallery from January 26 through March 19, 2023.

 

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