Vital Banality

For what is the final chapter of a three part series, Colored People Time: Banal Presents is a compelling, and rarely heard story of a national disgrace in America. Featuring new and recent works from Sable Elyse Smith and Cameron Rowland, and a newly commissioned work by Carolyn Lazard, the exhibition explores the history of medical experimentation at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, funded by the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s through the 1970s. 

Through multi-media works, which include immersive video, photography and installation, Colored People Time: Banal Presents is a profound investigation into how the history of slavery and colonialism in America exists in and impacts the present moment. Other newly announced exhibitions through the ICA’s Fall season include a retrospective to fierce pussy, a collective who came together during the height of the AIDS outbreak in the early-1990s. Formed of Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka, fierce pussy were a DIY protest collective operating across New York.

Colored People Time: Banal Presents opens at ICA Philadelphia, 13 September. Find out more here.

Image courtesy of: Kevin Jerome Everson, IFO, 2017. Film still. © Kevin Jerome Everson. Courtesy of the artist, Trilobite Arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures.