Meridians ABMB 2022 | Devan Shimoyama: Devan Shimoyama, The Grove

29 November - 3 December 2022
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     Kavi Gupta presents Devan Shimoyama’s large-scale installation The Grove, selected for Art Basel Miami Beach’s acclaimed MERIDIANS section, which centers monumental works of significant importance. Making its first public appearance since its debut in the Smithsonian Institution’s critically acclaimed Futures exhibition in Washington DC, The Grove depicts the phenomenon of pairs of shoes tied at the laces, dangling from telephone wires. Such a sight is usually presumed to be an indication of gang territory or violence, unavoidably calling our attention to the people who once wore the shoes. However, shoes dangling from wires don’t always indicate criminality; they are sometimes evidence of a celebration, or innocent moments of play. Shimoyama’s bedazzled monument features shoes covered in crystals, suspended from the interconnected wires of rhinestone-encrusted telephone poles. Glistening with kinetic energy and light, The Grove suggests a possibility for transformation within a dreamspace of remembrance, where the coexistence of presence and absence, and beauty and pain, is essential to the memories we construct and the history we co-create.
     
     
  • Other major current and recent exhibitions include Devan Shimoyama in The Regional, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; When We See...

    Other major current and recent exhibitions include Devan Shimoyama in The Regional, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; When We See Us, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa;  Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, at FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art; All the Rage, at Kunstpalais, Shimoyama’s debut European solo museum exhibition; A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, Kavi Gupta; Untitled (For Tamir), a single work exhibition in the Spotlight Gallery at The Rockwell Museum; Black Gentleman and Midnight Rumination, a major multi-museum exhibition at The Regional, co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art, Museum of Arts and Design; Realms of Refuge, Kavi Gupta; Tell Me Your Story, Kunsthal KAdE; Getting to Know You, Cleveland Institute of Art; We Named Her Gladys, Kavi Gupta; The Barbershop Project, CulturalDC; Fictions, The Studio Museum; and Translating Valence: Redefining Black Male Identity, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. Shimoyama was awarded the Al Held Fellowship at the Yale School of Art in 2013.

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  • Devan Shimoyama in FUTURES at the Smithsonian Institution, Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, VA

    Devan Shimoyama in FUTURES at the Smithsonian Institution

    Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, VA 20 November 2021 - 6 July 2022
    For its 175th anniversary, the Smithsonian is looking forward. What do you think of when you think of the future? FUTURES is the first building-wide exploration of the future on...