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    Thick as Mud

     
    North Gallery
    February 04, 2023 — May 07, 2023
    Thick as Mud explores how mud animates relationships between people and place through the work of eight contemporary artists. Across multiple geographies and a range of aesthetic approaches—from figurative clay sculpture to audio recordings of the swamp—these artists engage mud as a material or subject that shapes personal and collective histories, memory, and imagination. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the theme, conjuring dynamics embedded in the landscape that include colonial and racialized forms of dispossession, cultural reclamation, narratives of self-actualization, and ecological loss and adaptation. 
    Mud moves through the exhibition as a metaphor as well as a tangible material. Both water and earth, mud exists in an in-between state. A medium that dissolves binaries, mud invites a blurring of past and present, personal and political, bodies and landscape, feeling and knowing. In various ways, the artworks in Thick as Mud move across these porous boundaries, disrupting linear narratives and dominant hierarchies that shape which places and stories matter.
    Across the artworks, mud becomes an agent of time and transformation and a medium of decomposition and creation. As such, Thick as Mud tracks the afterlives of violence against people and the environment while also evoking the potential for regeneration. The exhibition is an invitation to ask what lives in the mud and to reconnect with the possibilities that this material holds.    
    ARTISTS
    Dineo Seshee Bopape
    Diedrick Brackens
    Ali Cherri
    Christine Howard Sandoval
    Candice Lin
    Rose B. Simpson
    Eve Tagny
    Sasha Wortzel

    Publication

    CREDITS

    Thick as Mud is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Curator. Lead support for this exhibition is provided by generous gifts from David and Catherine Eaton Skinner and William True. Additional support is provided by Jessica Silverman, Jack Shainman Gallery, Stanlee R. Gatti, and Lorna Meyer Calas and Dennis Calas. Media sponsorship generously provided by The Seattle Times. Hospitality sponsorship provided by Graduate Seattle.

    Related Content

    • Of Men and Gods and Mud Transcipt

    • Thick as Mud Digital Resource Guide

    • Thick as Mud: A Poetic Response

    Related Programs

    <p>Ebony Welborn working on her poem in Eve Tagny's <em>The Carriers</em> (2023).</p>
    Talks & Performances
    Thick as Mud: A Poetic Response Publication Launch
    April 22, 2023
    <p>Installation view of <em>Thick as Mud</em>, 2023, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jonathan Vanderweit.
</p>
    Tours
    Curator Tour: Thick as Mud
    March 25, 2023
    <p>Donna Huanca, Installation view of <em>Donna Huanca: MAGMA SLIT</em>, 2022, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jonathan Vanderweit.</p>
    Screenings
    Film Screening: DIS Collective
    February 4 & 5, 11 AM & 2 PM
    <p>Dineo Seshee Bopape, <em>Master Harmoniser (Ile aya, moya, la, ndokh)</em>, 2021. HD video, sound, 25:09 mins. Installation view of Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Kosovo, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut / Hamburg. Photo: Majlinda Hoxha.</p>
    Events

    Public Opening: Thick as Mud

    February 3, 2023
    <p>Rose B. Simpson, installation view of <em>The Duo</em>, 2019, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photo: John Wilson White, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.</p>
    Events

    Patron Preview: Thick as Mud

    February 3, 2023