Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe
Through Mar 2025
Raque Ford, A little space for you right under my shoe, 2024. Inkjet print on vinyl. Collection of the artist, courtesy Greene Naftali, New York
Open: Aug 27, 2024–Mar 2025
Presented on the building facade on Horatio Street across from the Whitney and the High Line is a newly commissioned work by multimedia artist Raque Ford (b. 1986, Columbia, MD; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York).
In Ford’s billboard project, the words “A little space for you / right under my shoe” waver across a collage of shoe prints and other graphic shapes. Excerpted from an original poem by the artist, the text invokes the conflicted feelings that can come with romantic longing and desire for connection with others, when holding someone close can teeter on crushing them. Ford plays with the scale and site-specificity of the billboard, as the imposing image of stomping shoes hovers over the pedestrian viewer below. True to much of Ford’s work, there is an edged sweetness here; something that may seem “cute” on the surface is belied by an apprehensiveness and ambivalence that registers on multiple levels.
Ford’s practice uses layers of text, image and media, often incorporating commercial materials like mylar, acrylic and steel. Working within the traditions of pop art and minimalism, she remixes contemporary symbols—here, diaristic writing, pop-punk aesthetics, clip art, and abstraction—to explore how private subjectivity is shaped by social codes and as a means to unsettle popular culture's insistent terms of address.
This project is organized by Roxanne Smith, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
This work is part of a series of public art installations organized by the Whitney in partnership with TF Cornerstone and High Line Art.
Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe is part of Outside the Box programming, which is supported by a generous endowment from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.
En Español
En la obra de Raque Ford Un pequeño espacio para ti / justo debajo de mi zapato, se presenta un collage de huellas de zapatos y otras formas gráficas entrelazadas con las palabras que titulan la pieza. La obra expuesta en el cartel publicitario en la fachada del edificio de Horatio Street, frente al Whitney y el High Line, toma su título de un poema original de la artista, que invoca los sentimientos que surgen del anhelo romántico y el deseo de conexión con los demás, cuando sostener a alguien muy fuerte puede llevar al punto de quebrarlo.
Raque Ford es una artista multimedia que nació en Columbia, MD, en 1986 y que actualmente trabaja en Brooklyn, Nueva York. En esta obra la artista juega con la escala y la especificidad del sitio, ya que la imagen de los zapatos pisando fuerte intenta situarse sobre los peatones que la observan. Como en muchas de las obras de Ford, aquí se explora una dulzura cortante, ya que en su superficie da la sensación de ser “adorable”, pero es desmentida por sentimientos opuestos de aprehensión y ambivalencia.
Ford trabaja con capas de texto, imágenes y medios, a menudo incorporando materiales comerciales como el mylar, el acrílico y el acero. Dentro de las tradiciones del arte pop y el minimalismo, la artista combina símbolos contemporáneos, como la escritura diarística, la estética pop-punk, el clip art y la abstracción, para explorar cómo la subjetividad propia está moldeada por los códigos sociales y para desestabilizar los insistentes términos que surgen de la cultura popular.
Este proyecto ha sido organizado por Roxanne Smith, Asistente curatorial sénior del Whitney Museum of American Art.
Audio guides
Raque Ford, A little space for you right under my shoe, 2024. Inkjet print on vinyl. Collection of the artist, courtesy Greene Naftali, New York
Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from the exhibition.
View guideInstallation photography
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Installation view of Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, August 27, 2024-March 2025). Photograph by Ron Amstutz
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Installation view of Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, August 27, 2024-March 2025). Photograph by Ron Amstutz
A poem by Raque Ford
Black Face White Mask Martini
What’s the new level of cute you are reaching for?
I don’t know, but she holds her face like someone that doesn’t know her face
You know when you are standing
and your sole is on the floor
and your heel is digging into the ground
and that little space between them
Right there
that’s where I make a little space for you
Right under my shoe
Sometimes I will get down on my knees to see if you are still there
as if I’m praying
Praying for you to give me my sin again
Then I wake up to the realization that, Fuck! I don’t want to be a pretty girl. And I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I choose you for a reason.
Because YOU would listen
I’m sitting at a bar
black face, white mask, and a martini.
Pouncy and petulant.
I used to think a lot about performing,
performing my identity,
but now I’m so tired I can’t.
I haven’t thought about it in a while.
Does that make me myself?
Do you think when you voice something you want that it will happen, or that saying it out loud will jinx it and it will never happen?
That you’ve ruined it by letting it out into the atmosphere.
Or worse, you will get exactly what you want, but you don't want it really or it arrives slightly wrong.
Like they didn’t hear you right because you said it so softly.
Public Art
View more site-specific artworks outside the Whitney’s walls.