Eliana Willis

Raffia skirts, rosebud hair knots, abstracted, eyeless faces, and the Black female body are the elemental components of American artist Simone Leigh’s (b. 1967) distinct visual language, a language the artist has crafted to fluency over the past two decades of her career.
Over the years, Leigh’s artworks have earned widespread critical and public acclaim with solo exhibitions at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, the High Line, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Perez Art Museum in Miami. Last summer, in a career-crowning achievement, Leigh represented the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Her presentation, “Sovereignty,” filled the pavilion’s Neoclassical structure with a striking set of new sculptures made of age-old materials of bronze and ceramic, merging architectural structures with the female body, in powerful statements on Black women’s labor, cultural transmission, and hierarchies of power. The stunning presentation won Leigh the Golden Lion, the biennale’s highest honor.
Now, the American public will have the chance to see many of these works in the U.S. for the first time. The ICA Boston recently opened the much-anticipated exhibition “Simone Leigh,” curated by Eva Respini, deputy director of curatorial affairs, and Anni A. Pullagura, curatorial assistant. Here, 10 works from Venice form the nucleus of an expanded survey of 35 works across ceramic, bronze, and video.
“It’s a privilege to be able to go to Venice. A very small number of people can do that and so we felt it was important to bring the works here, to have U.S. audiences be able to enjoy it. And while the show is certainly a celebratory homecoming, we’ve also created a context for those works within a broader context of her career,” said Respini in a conversation. Following ICA Boston, the exhibition will travel to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles for a joint presentation with LACMA and the California African American Museum. 
If you’re new to Simone Leigh’s work or simply curious about the exhibition, we’ve chosen what we consider to be 5 essential artworks in the exhibition, which unlock insights into Leigh’s larger practice. Read below to find out more.
Satellite (2022)
Installation view of Simone Leigh’s Satellite (2022) at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo by Timothy Schenck. © Simone Leigh.
Just the Facts: Before visitors even reach the ICA, they are met by the monumental bronze, Satellite, which towers 24 feet tall, installed outside the museum. Satellite is particularly representative of the ways Leigh explores and combines materials and cultural histories; the figure is inspired by a D’mba, a wooden headdress with a female bust belonging to the Baga people of the Guinea Coast. These headdresses were traditionally worn ceremonially as a conduit between the living and the dead. In Leigh’s sculpture, the head is replaced by a large bronze satellite dish. 
Expert Insights: “Simone’s works are always hybrids in many ways of the cultural and material histories of the African diaspora, the African continent, the Caribbean as well the U.S. Here, she has taken this idea of the headdress, and blown it up to a monumental scale, but in place of a head has cast a satellite dish that is 10 feet across, bringing in a very modern and contemporary conduit. Satellite dishes are built for both receiving and broadcasting. And so that satellite dish, in a way becomes a beacon that not only broadcasts outwards but also receives all of those who come to the show,” said curator Eva Respini. 
Bonus Material: In Venice, Satellite stood majestically at the center of the U.S. pavilion’s courtyard. In this installation, the sculpture, marked by its beautiful black patina, is installed along the Boston Harbor and can be seen from several blocks away, welcoming visitors to the museum.

Overburdened with Significance (2011)
Simone Leigh, Overburdened with Significance (2011). Photo by Timothy Schenck. © Simone Leigh.
Just the Facts: Simone Leigh first rose to acclaim for her busts and heads, which reinterpret the classical motif. Overburdened with Significance is among the earliest heads Leigh created, here defined by an elongated hairstyle composed of glazed rosettes in white, gray, and tan. The figure’s abstracted face will be recognizable to those familiar with Leigh’s work–and is eyeless, as is also common to her works. Such depictions have at times been interpreted as a refusal of a gaze or an inward look, but also speak to Leigh’s interest in the abstraction of the body. 
Expert Insights: “The narrative of labor is very prominent throughout Simone’s work, specifically the idea of anonymous and unrecognized labor, specifically the labor of Black women’s intellectual labor, as well as creative or domestic labor. And so, for me, the rosettes of Overburdened with Significance are not only a motif that she has come back to again and again, but I feel like I can see her making them and I look at the work, that they embody the act of making and very tactile and haptic. Of course, people shouldn’t touch! But this work has the kind of texture and tactility that is what makes her work so resonant,” said Respini.
Bonus Material: Leigh handcrafts each and every rosette, rolling clay between her fingers to form each petal. 
Breakdown (2011)
Liz Magic Laser and Simone Leigh, in collaboration with Alicia Hall Moran, Breakdown (2011). Courtesy of the artists and Matthew Marks Gallery.
Just the Facts: Though not as widely familiar as her sculptures, Leigh has frequently collaborated with other artists in creating video works. The ICA exhibition features three of these video works, including Breakdown (2011) made with artist Liz Magic Laser with composer and musical artist Alicia Hall Moran. The 9-minute single-channel color video features Moran, a mezzo-soprano, singing a libretto of a “hysterical” breakdown, the language culled from fictional scenes of women crying in both television shows and movies. The results film is a moving, tragicomic mediation on psychology, race, and gender.
Expert Insights: “We put ‘hysterical’ in quotes here because it’s really about the roles that women are forced to play and the stereotypes that women have been pushed into. Hysteria in this 19th-century sense is perceived as performative and in this work, Alicia does a beautiful performance that’s very expressive and intense. The volume of her voice and the cadence of it really sort of embodies the libretto and reverberates through the rafters of the Harlem church where this was filmed. Breakdown really underscores the many different arenas, Simone is drawing from and her interest in pushing forward the work of other creators,” said Respini. 
Bonus Material: Moran’s character’s breakdown is spurred by a quite mundane inconvenience: she doesn’t want to attend a ballgame. 

Last Garment (2022)
Simone Leigh, Last Garment (2022). Installation view at “Simone Leigh,” the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo by Timothy Schenck. © Simone Leigh.
Just the Facts: This bronze sculpture (measuring approximately 4.5 by 5 feet) has a concrete inspiration—a 19th-century souvenir photograph that depicts an anonymous Jamaican laundress, bent washing clothes in a river. Such souvenir photographs were used by tourism bureaus to attract visitors to the British West Indies and in this case Jamaica. Last Garment reflects upon these visual histories of labor, specifically, the anonymous labor of Black women, giving permanence to this figure. 
Expert Insights: “Simone has intervened and rethought the laundress’s anonymity by giving her a grand scale through this larger-than-life representation made in beautiful and durable bronze. What’s most captivating to me is the incredible attention to detail Leigh brings to this sculpture, in particular the figure’s hair, which is made of almost 800 individual rosettes. Even working at this scale, Leigh brings details to the fore, giving the sculpture an incredible impact in person,” said Anni Pullagura.
Bonus Material: The sculpture is meant to be presented with a reflecting pool, as it was in Venice. Here in the ICA installation, a new, larger reflecting pool has been created for Last Garment, one that is situated breathtakingly along the sightline of Boston Harbor outside.
Cupboard IX (2019) 
Simone Leigh, Cupboard IX (2019). Courtesy of the artist. © Simone Leigh.
Just the Facts: In Leigh’s more recent large-scale ceramic sculptures, bodily elements often fuse with familiar household domestic storage objects, in this case, a cupboard. Cupboard IX, a towering sculpture, which measures 6.5 feet tall, presents a faceless head atop a woman’s torso, whose arms are outstretched in a gesture of welcoming. This upper body is ceramic and fired with a luminous green tea glaze. The head is in the shape of a pot—a vessel we might imagine collecting water or as storage for grain. Still yet, one might picture a woman walking with a pot on top of her head. All these allusions lead back to one of Leigh’s more central symbols: woman as nourisher. This upper torso is affixed to a steel armature overlaid with a raffia skirt. Raffia skirts appear in many of Leigh’s works, signaling motherhood and femininity, along with architecture and Sub-Saharan dwellings. In this way, Cupboard IX brings together many of the motifs that reconfigure throughout her oeuvre. Leigh has said that she creates for an audience of Black women and femmes, and through works like Cupboard IX she speaks to their community roles, as providers and protectors. 
Expert Insights: “The dome shape form reads as a skirt, but it also reads as a structure. It could be a reference to Muskoka architecture or Sub-Saharan architecture. You could think of it as a hut, perhaps, but also as a place of refuge. The idea of hiding under your mother’s skirts, comes to mind. The femme body appears here as a place of gathering, a place of safety and welcoming, which is echoed again in the gesture of outstretched arms,” said Respini. 
Bonus Material: Raffia comes from a palm tree native to Madagascar and is used in many contexts within the African continent including housing and basket weaving. It can be found all throughout the Global South, however, in the Caribbean, and in East Asia.
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The very name “artificial intelligence” tends to position these technological developments in opposition to the natural world. Offering a fresh perspective, the French London-based artist Marguerite Humeau has reimagined A.I. as a type of collective intelligence like the one shared by ants, termites, or bees.
Humeau has tested out the idea by collaborating with A.I. to help create the video work Collective Effervescence (2023) and a ceramic mural for “meys,” her solo exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey in south London, which runs until May 14.
The show is inspired by eusocial insects, which manage to pull-off incredible feats of engineering comparative to their size and individual ability thanks to their instinct for cooperation. Each of these strange but sophisticated artworks are, in some way, the result of the “hive mind.” They prompt viewers to consider what we humans might hope to learn from these seemingly insignificant pests.
“There are forms of life that will survive us, how can we take them as our guides or companions to understand how to navigate our own futures?” Humeau has asked.
In the exhibition’s first room, we see Humeau resurrect and build on intelligence from the past, in this case that of the Polish artist Adam Kossowski who made a large mosaic for the Peckham Civic Centre, also in south London, in 1965. His work, The History of the Old Kent Road, is now scheduled for demolition, but Humeau has decided to give it an update with an A.I. twist by enlisting the help of the GPT3 algorithm to create a new, post-apocalyptic vision of the city. This is displayed in a series of hand-sculpted tiles or “fragments.”

Marguerite Humeau, The History of Old Kent Road (Post-Kossowski) Fragments I–V (2023). Photo courtesy of White Cube.
Marguerite Humeau, The History of Old Kent Road (Post-Kossowski) Fragment XI (2023). Photo courtesy of White Cube.
In Kossowski’s original mural, a single Camberwell Beauty butterfly can be spotted by the more attentive viewers. In Humeau’s version, this insect appears in a large swarm, reminding us that the end of the world for humans may offer other populations the opportunity to regenerate.
The film Collective Effervescence is a study of the harmoniously choreographed behavior of termites living within a mound, capturing the excitement of their shared vitality. Just as humans farm, these insects must create and cultivate a fungus garden as a communal source of food. Once again, Humeau has used OpenAI’s popular A.I. text-to-image generator DALL-E to generate images that fantasize about this process as a ritualistic dance.

Marguerite Humeau, Collective Effervescence (2023). The artist generated this image in part with DALL-E, OpenAI’s image-generation model. Photo: © Marguerite Humeau.
Marguerite Humeau, Collective Effervescence (2023). The artist generated this image in part with DALL-E, OpenAI’s image-generation model. Photo: © Marguerite Humeau.
Marguerite Humeau, Collective Effervescence (2023). The artist generated this image in part with DALL-E, OpenAI’s image-generation model. Photo: © Marguerite Humeau.

Elsewhere in the show, Humeau explores more traditional forms of collaboration and interdependence by working with collectives of craftspeople with a complementary variety of skills. Each specializing in a different kind of material—including, glass, terracotta, wax, and wood—they have worked together on a series of highly intricate sculptures with forms that were clearly inspired by the organic world. These fantastical “totems” or “Guardians,” staged within a dimly lit gallery space, bring to mind the layered branches of coral, the repeat grooves of a mushroom or the porous surface of honeycomb.
Check out some of these works below.
Installation view of Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition “meys” at White Cube Bermondsey. Photo: Ollie Hammick, © White Cube.
Installation view of Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition “meys” at White Cube Bermondsey. Photo: Ollie Hammick, © White Cube.
Installation view of Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition “meys” at White Cube Bermondsey. Photo: Ollie Hammick, © White Cube.
Installation view of Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition “meys” at White Cube Bermondsey. Photo: Ollie Hammick, © White Cube.
Installation view of Marguerite Humeau’s exhibition “meys” at White Cube Bermondsey. Photo: Ollie Hammick, © White Cube.
“meys” is on view at White Cube Bermondsey, 144-152 Bermondsey St, London, through May 14.

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In recent weeks, a hot pink beacon has arisen on the High Line at West 30th Street. Standing 25 feet tall atop the High Line Plinth, Old Tree is the work of Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz, its 145 branches recalling at once both the limbs of a tree and human blood vessels.
“This piece immediately stood out because of the ambition of scale, and the color is something incredible that brought it to a whole other level,” Cecilia Alemani, the director and chief curator of High Line Art told Artnet News during the installation of the work. “It’s like the central square in a village with a tree and benches around it.”
Fabricated outside San Diego and shipped cross country in two trucks, the work had arrived in pieces, a steel armature covered with spray foam and carefully sculpted into delicate branches sealed with epoxy.
Each of the 16 limbs and six roots were carefully assembled on site, the tree growing bit by bit, almost as if it had been planted there by Rosenkranz. (The artist even covered the plinth with an earthy surface so it resembles soil.)
Pamela Rosenkranz, Old Tree (2023). A High Line Plinth commission. Photo by Timothy Schenck courtesy of the High Line, New York.
“It’s a synthetic artificial tree in the middle of a park,” Alemani said. That contrast between the natural and the manmade—on a park that is itself an abandoned train track once reclaimed by nature—was part of what drew her to the work, which was first proposed in 2020 in response to an open call. It became a finalist for the site that November.
Old Tree is the third commission for the plinth, which launched in 2019 with Brick House by Simone Leigh. (That piece later won a Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated by Alemani.) It follows Untitled (drone) by Sam Durant.
Pamela Rosenkranz, Old Tree (2023). A High Line Plinth commission. Photo by Timothy Schenck courtesy of the High Line, New York.
The new artwork’s bold color is a dramatic departure from its two predecessors, which were black and white, as well as the Hudson Yards skyscrapers that tower above it.
“This new part of the city is kind of cold, with incredible glass and mirrored surfaces. It’s so corporate and masculine in a way,” Alemani said. “The contrast with the surroundings is really quite stunning.”
Pamela Rosenkranz, Old Tree (2023). A High Line Plinth commission. Photo by Timothy Schenck courtesy of the High Line, New York.
Rosenkranz applied the bright reddish pink paint as she would to one of her canvases, with seven layers topped with with a clear UV coating.
You can see subtle drips and variations in texture of the painted surface, which adds to the fleshy, bodily feel of the work. The trunk could be a torso, muscular and strong, while the roots and branches recall a delicate network of veins and capillaries.
Compared to the initial renderings, Alemani said, “it looks much less of a tree.”
Pamela Rosenkranz, Old Tree (2023). A High Line Plinth commission. Photo by Timothy Schenck courtesy of the High Line, New York.
The works unveiling comes ahead of the opening of a new extension of the High Line Spur, which was once slated for demolition. Just beyond the plinth and nearing completion is the High Line’s new Moynihan Connection, first announced by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo in January 2021.
The Woodland Bridge, extending along 30th Street, was built last year, with 63 trees, 90 shrubs, and over 5,000 grasses and flowers. This weekend, it was connected to to the public plaza in Brookfield Properties’ Manhattan West building on 9th Avenue with the installation of a 300-foot Timber Bridge made from Alaskan yellow cedar. From there, pedestrians will be able to access the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station.
The installation of the new Timber Bridge, connecting the High Line Spur’s Woodland Bridge to Manhattan West and Moynihan Station. Photo by Andrew Frasz, courtesy of the High Line, New York.
“You can walk all the way down to the West Village without crossing the street,” Alemani said.
The $50 million project is expected to open to the public this summer.
“Pamela Rosenkranz: Old Tree” is on view at the High Line at the Spur, at West 30th Street and 10th Avenue, New York, May 2023–September 2024.

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From whichever angle you approach Ramses II, the 13th century B.C.E pharaoh earns his epithet: the Great.
His 67-year reign stands as the second longest in Egyptian history. Bold in both war and peace, Ramses expanded Egyptian territory and signed the earliest-known peace treaty with the Hittites in 1271 B.C.E. This consolidation led to an unparalleled building of cities and monuments—often to himself. Ramses’s progeny was also vast, he’s estimated to have fathered more than 100 children.
There may have been 11 other pharaohs named Ramses, but “Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” a recently opened show in Paris demonstrates the pharaoh who acquired semi-godlike status in his own lifetime needs no identifiers.
The exhibition is on the third leg of a five-year, 10-city global tour with previous stops at Houston Museum of Natural Science and San Francisco’s de Young Museum. It was devised through a collaboration between the Supreme Council of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt and World Heritage Exhibitions.
Installation view of Sennedjem’s outer coffin, and its lid. Photo: la Grande Halle de la Villette à Paris, © Yvan Lebert.
Across more than 180 objects, many of which have never before left Egypt, the show creates a vivid picture of the country’s ancient Golden Age. Though Ramses’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings was raided and plundered of its gold adornments, the show presents ample treasures directly connected to him including a colossal red granite statue of the pharaoh’s head, one of his many gold rings, and painted reliefs celebrating his military victories.
More broadly, the exhibition presents a view of the world Ramses inhabited, sculpted, and inspired. There is space dedicated to the grave of royal tomb builder Sennedjem, a collection of mummified animals found at the Saqqara necropolis, and treasures discovered in the royal tombs in Dahshur and Tanis.
Installation of the multimedia display of the Battle of Kadesh. Photo: la Grande Halle de la Villette à Paris, © Yvan Lebert.
The exhibition also leans on contemporary technology to bring both artifacts and historical events to life. Drone footage and computer animations have been used to recreate the ancient splendor of Ramses’s memorial temple, photo-murals are projected on walls, and there’s a multimedia recreation of the Battle of Kadesh, a 1274 B.C.E. chariot battle widely considered the pharaoh’s greatest military achievement. There is also a V.R. experience available to visitors.
“Ramses II is considered to be the greatest king ever to rule Egypt,” said Mostafa Waziri, Egypt’s Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in a press statement. “This exhibition will illuminate the pivotal moments that earned the great pharaoh his place in history, while bringing visitors face-to-face with absolutely stunning Egyptian artifacts”
See more images of the exhibition below.
Head of a colossal statue of Ramses II. Photo: Sandro Vannini/Laboratoriorosso World Heritage Exhibitions.
Statue of Ramses kneeling. Photo: Sandro Vannini/Laboratoriorosso World Heritage Exhibitions.
Granite bust of Merenptah. Photo: 2020 World Heritage Exhibitions.
Necklace with falcon heads and counterweights of Princess Neferou-Ptah Photo: Sandro Vannini/Laboratoriorosso World Heritage Exhibitions.
Coffin of Ramses II made in cedar at the end of the 18th dynasty. Photo: Sandro Vannini, Laboratoriorosso/World Heritage Exhibitions.
Bracelet of Chechonq II. Photo: Sandro Vannini/Laboratoriorosso World Heritage Exhibitions.
Installation view of the upper part of an obelisk with the name of Ramses II. Photo: Sandro Vannini/Laboratoriorosso World Heritage Exhibitions.
Mirror of Sithathoriounet. Photo: Sandro Vannini/LaboratoriorossoWorld Heritage Exhibitions.
“Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs” is on view at the Grande Halle de la Villette, 211 Av. Jean Jaurès, Paris, France, through September 6.
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