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BRIC presents “Suné Woods : Aragonite Stars,” an immersive video installation that utilizes waterscape scenes to speak about concepts such as existence, intimacy, healing, and aquatic ecology. Marking the first solo exhibition of Suné Woods art in New York, “Aragonite Stars” will take place at BRIC House (647 Fulton) in BRIC’s Gallery through May 8, 2022.
A newly commissioned expansion of “Aragonite Stars” will revive the video originally presented at Hammer Museum in 2018 as part of “Made in L.A.” The work looks at the important role water plays in the African Diaspora as a place for healing and mythologies regarding water as the home for spirits.
The installation will feature a thirteen-minute video which will be presented as five monumental projections on the walls and floor of the gallery, accompanied by a soundtrack of ambient and discordant sounds by singer-songwriter and musician, Meshell Ndegeocello. The sequencing of the channels follows that of dream fragments or the language of collage. Through the use of non-linear language, Woods connects to how ancestors communicate through dreams.
Suné Woods art explores notions of sexual power as presented by Audre Lorde. The work asks questions around the destruction of the environment and the proliferation of harmful images of violence against Black bodies. Through the creation of alternative futures – what one can learn by studying marine life – our interaction with nature and each other can be seen differently.
Woods is interested in how our perceptions of power can shift in terms of what can heal and cause harm. Woods’ work foregrounds Indigenous and Black points of view that are often left out of ecological discussions and that encourage the decentering of humans from nature.
Placing imagery of aquatic plants and animals alongside videos of figures in water creates moving parallels that harken back to a more primordial time and contextualize humans as just one part of the greater living world.
For the duration of the exhibition, BRIC’s subterranean gallery space will be fully covered by tarps for an immersive experience that evokes the depth and darkness of the deep ocean, and our ever-evolving relationship with it. The video projections overlaid on the tarps create an uncanny, underwater-like environment. Viewed holistically, the work draws attention to the transformative, ancestral power of
About the Artist
Suné Woods (she/her/they/them/he/him) is a noted mid-career artist based in Los Angeles. Her work has been presented in exhibitions including “Made in L.A. 2018,” Hammer Museum, and “When A Heart Scatter, Scatter, Scatter” at Everson Museum of Art.
She has participated in residencies at Headlands Center of the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
Woods is a recipient of the Visions from the New California initiative and the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship Award. In addition, in 2020 she received the prestigious Artadia Award. Woods has served as Visiting Faculty in the CalArts Photography & Media Program, Vermont College of Fine Arts Visual Art Program, and as Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.
She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the UCLA Department of Art.
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