Cauleen Smith: Mutualities
February 17, 2020–January 31, 2021

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This exhibition is the first solo New York presentation of multi-disciplinary artist Cauleen Smith (b. 1967), whose work, which was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, draws on elements of poetry, science fiction, and non-Western cosmologies to reflect on Afro-diasporic histories and new models of self-reliance and agency. The exhibition features two recent films, newly acquired for the Whitney's collection, in an installation that reimagines the future as a utopian space of care, acceptance, and mutuality. In Sojourner, women carry six banners bearing words by the jazz composer and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane, whose music forms the soundtrack for both films. The women walk in procession through locations including Noah Purifoy's Outdoor Art Museum in Joshua Tree. Pilgrim traces the artist's pilgrimage to Coltrane's ashram, Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and Rebecca Cox Jackson's Shaker communities in Philadelphia and Watervliet. In both films, Smith uses the camera and light as improvisational instruments to reveal the power of invention and generosity as resources to transform and rebuild.

Concurrent with Cauleen Smith: Mutualities, from March 5 through May 13, High Line Art will present Signals from Here, an exhibition of Cauleen Smith's video work. Screening evenings on the park at 14th Street, the program includes Three Songs About Liberation (2017), Crow Requiem (2015), Lessons in Semaphore (2015), H-E-L-L-O (2014), and Songs for Earth and Folk (2013).

Cauleen Smith: Mutualities is organized by Chrissie Iles, Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, with Clémence White, senior curatorial assistant.