Join MA-NMWA for a tour of Tau Lewis: Spirit Level, led by Jeffrey De Blois, ICA Mannion Family Curator, and organizer of this exhibition. Tau Lewis transforms found materials into fabric-based figurative sculptures, quilts, masks, and other assemblages through labor-intensive processes such as hand-sewing and carving. She forages for objects and materials that carry meaning and memories—from previously worn clothing and leather to driftwood and seashells. Often, these artifacts are drawn from a meticulously organized material library the artist has amassed since 2000 collected from innumerable places. The evocative objects Lewis gathers and transforms carry their own spirit and energy and connect her work to the social, cultural, and physical landscapes that she moves through, collects from, and inhabits. Lewis describes these different landscapes as “Black geographies.”
Lewis is creating a new body of work for the ICA, that will be accompanied by her first monograph. “Lewis harnesses the beauty and power carried by found materials in her monumental soft sculptures,” said De Blois. “Her sculptures are alive with the energy of previously worn found fabrics and animated through every meticulous gesture. They are intensely personal, yet open to a world of associations and meanings.”
