The Shed: Howardena Pindell’s Rope/Fire/Water

The Shed: What is it?

On the West Side lies a multimedia artist safe haven: The Shed. The Shed is a venue for artists of all backgrounds and all mediums. The building is located right off of what is now Hudson Yards, and has welcomed “established and emerging artists to create new work in fields ranging from pop to classical music, painting to digital media, theater to literature, and sculpture to dance.” Their most recent artist feature is Howardena Pindell. 

Their guiding ethos is that art and ideas are rights, not privileges. The independent non-profit is “committed to advancing art forms… and making [their] work impactful, sustainable and relevant.” Their current space, though located in The Bloomberg Building, is perfect for COVID-19 compliant exhibits, shows and performances.

In solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the uprisings of 2020, The Shed’s current exhibition is Howardena Pindell’s Rope/Fire/Water. Howardena Pindell is a multimedia artist, activist, critic, and currently, a professor. She was the Museum of Modern Art’s first Black curator for more than a decade. Working primarily through painting and film, Pindell has pushed the boundaries of what abstract art can be through her monumental canvases and filmography. 

Howardena Pindell’s Rope/Fire/Water

On view now through April 11 2021, Pindell’s body of work is a raw take on the horrors of racism, imperialism, and colonialism in this country. Pindell employs film, painting and collage to recount themes of brutality and racist violence. 

Rope/Fire/Water is a 16 minute video, narrated by Pindell herself. Pindell relays  historical and anthropological statistics on racist attacks in the United States, dating back to the 16th century. Alongside the voice over are archived postcards, photographs and images of brutalized black bodies: lynched, hung, and dehumanized. 

Accompanying her first video in 25 years, Pindell has presented two complementary works, titled Columbus (2020) and Four Little Girls (2020). The paintings explore imperialism and violence against indigenous and

African communities. Four Little Girls (pictured above) specifically pays homage to four young lives lost in a racially fueled church fire in the south. 

Lining the other walls of the gallery are stretched, pastel colored canvases like Plankton Lace #1 (2020). These canvases spearhead what it means to create mixed media work. Included on the canvas are strings of glitter and paper hole puncher scraps. These abstract paintings, pictured below, are meant to put the viewer’s mind at ease. Digestion of such heavy content and factual information is required of the exhibition for acquiring the full scope of impact.