ExhibitionJuly 19, 2024
Tadáskía
The Museum of Modern Art presents Projects: Tadáskía, on view in the Museum’s street-level galleries from May 24 through October 14, 2024, as well as the acquisition of the exhibition’s centerpiece, an expansive work on paper titled ave preta mística mystical black bird (2022), into MoMA’s collection. Tadáskía is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brazil who uses drawing, sculpture, and mixed media to articulate themes of transformation and joy influenced by her experiences as a Black trans woman. The exhibition, presented in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem, is the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States and features MoMA’s recently acquired work alongside a monumental wall drawing and sculptures made in response to the site at MoMA. She is the first artist to wall paint on the street-level gallery at the museum.
“I’m interested in the passage from one thing to another,” artist Tadáskía has said. Change, or mudança, in Tadáskía’s native Brazilian Portuguese, lies at the center of her multidisciplinary work. She foregrounds improvisation across drawing, sculpture, and other mediums, conveying fluidity through her dynamic mark-making, nuanced imagery, and kaleidoscopic palette.
Projects: Tadáskía features the artist’s expansive unbound book, ave preta mística mystical black bird (2022), which dialogues freeform drawings with her poetic, bilingual text. From one sheet to the next, we follow the narrative’s winged protagonist on a flight “towards a journey of freedom,” informed by the artist’s lived experience as a Black trans woman.
For this exhibition, the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States, she produced a monumental wall drawing and a set of sculptures in response to the gallery space. Using charcoal and dry pastels in various colors, Tadáskía spent roughly two weeks at MoMA creating an immersive wall drawing full of birdlike figures amid swirling, curving shapes with black outlines. Her mark-making encourages us to trace her coursing, shifting lines; the organic materials used in her sculptures evoke the ephemeral life cycles of nature. Alongside the central role of change, as Tadáskía asserts, “the main character in the work is time.”
The exhibition is organized by Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Ana Torok, the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, with the assistance of Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant, the Studio Museum in Harlem.
“I’m interested in the passage from one thing to another,” artist Tadáskía has said. Change, or mudança, in Tadáskía’s native Brazilian Portuguese, lies at the center of her multidisciplinary work. She foregrounds improvisation across drawing, sculpture, and other mediums, conveying fluidity through her dynamic mark-making, nuanced imagery, and kaleidoscopic palette.
Projects: Tadáskía features the artist’s expansive unbound book, ave preta mística mystical black bird (2022), which dialogues freeform drawings with her poetic, bilingual text. From one sheet to the next, we follow the narrative’s winged protagonist on a flight “towards a journey of freedom,” informed by the artist’s lived experience as a Black trans woman.
For this exhibition, the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States, she produced a monumental wall drawing and a set of sculptures in response to the gallery space. Using charcoal and dry pastels in various colors, Tadáskía spent roughly two weeks at MoMA creating an immersive wall drawing full of birdlike figures amid swirling, curving shapes with black outlines. Her mark-making encourages us to trace her coursing, shifting lines; the organic materials used in her sculptures evoke the ephemeral life cycles of nature. Alongside the central role of change, as Tadáskía asserts, “the main character in the work is time.”
The exhibition is organized by Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Ana Torok, the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, with the assistance of Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant, the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Gallery
