'Set It Off' Brings Six Female Artists Center Stage

Though the timing may have been purely coincidental, the messaging couldn’t be louder or clearer: It’s time for women to be seen, heard and recognized for their vision, strength and creativity.

On May 22, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill opened its summer season with “Set It Off,” an exhibition curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas — collectively known as Deux Femmes Noires. Created specifically for the museum, from sculpture, painting, ceramics and site-specific pieces, the show features a wide range of work by an international roster of six artists, all of whom are women of color.

On a recent May afternoon, Chevremont and Thomas took a break from installing the show at the Parrish to talk via Zoom about “Set It Off,” sharing insight into the process and how they approached its curation.

“We both had visited the museum on our own, but the first time we came together was when we were asked to curate the show to understand the space and light and location,” said Chevremont.

“We looked at the space and started thinking. We have a working list of artists we find interesting or who would spark a conversation. We ended up with all the artists we approached, which is amazing. We got very lucky here. We knew the bodies of work we wanted.”

When asked where the name for the show came from, Chevremont responded by saying, “‘Set it off,’ means making noise, doing something big and loud, making a statement. We’re here. Six Black women in this incredible museum. Look at us, see it. We’re creating work everyone needs to see.”

“We have agency. We’re validated,” Thomas added. “Interject, engage, learn. These artists will stay with you — they’ll leave a residue in your mind. You’ll be inspired and transformed.”

For “Set It Off,” the curators were given a good amount of space at the Parrish to work with, including the museum’s center exhibition corridor as well as the galleries on either side, plus outdoor spaces for larger sculptural pieces.

“It’s a lot of real estate,” Thomas said.

“It’s liberating,” Chevremont added.

As they witnessed the show coming together during installation, Thomas marveled at how the architectural features of the Parrish elevated the experience of “Set It Off,” which features the work of Leilah Babirye, Torkwase Dyson, February James, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Karyn Olivier and Kennedy Yanko.

“I feel like art should be seen in spaces like these. To present artists on this platform is incredible,” Thomas said. “Both indoors and outdoors, it’s an amazing opportunity for us to provide this type of agency.”

“We definitely wanted to bring in more sculpture, because of the high ceilings and vast open space,” Chevremont added.

“This space demands that, the juxtaposition — the different types of bodies of work in the same space,” Thomas said.

The six artists featured in “Set It Off” may not be familiar names to East End audiences, but with this show they have been given a platform to share their unique vision. While there is no overarching theme that carries throughout the show, Thomas noted that each of the artists has used their talent to make a different unique statement with their work.

“Karyn Olivier is speaking on immigration and coastal refugees — we felt that was very important,” said Chevremont. “While February James is coming from a personal narrative. They are all kind of in conversation around personal narratives and what’s really happening. It’s a great mixture.”

“It’s their singular vision and they’re bringing that to the forefront and providing awareness of how they think and move in these moments,” Thomas added, noting that “Set It Off” is running concurrently with the Parrish’s exhibition of Jasper Johns prints. “For them to be in conversation with someone like Jasper Johns is great. It’s important to have artists’ work in contexts that are unusual and unexpected.”

Also unexpected is the range of materials the artists have incorporated into this show, some of which aren’t traditionally associated with female artists. Among them are Kennedy Yanko’s large painted sculptural pieces. Though made of aluminum, metal and steel, the hard surfaces and edges of the works are transformed in the artist’s hands, folded like origami or softened through the use of color.

“Women are so, so strong,” Chevremont said. “It’s the soft exterior, but underneath they’re stronger than men.”

“All of their work has that base — the strength and softness,” added Thomas. “I think they all have that balance.”

For February James, a West Coast artist who grew up in Washington, D.C., revisiting the energy of strong women and others who came before is a key theme in her site-specific installation “My Ghosts to Sit With,” which occupies one of the Parrish galleries.

A found china cabinet, dining table and a pair of chairs are the central feature of the installation, and to each item a layer of cardboard and paper pulp, like papier maché, has been applied and then painted. Surrounding the table and chairs is a simple fence-like structure that encloses and protects the objects within.

The surrounding walls are adorned by portraits — some are faces painted in a similar hue as the furniture, others are full-body portraits of women adorned in fashions that evoke an earlier era. All of them speak to ancestors who once occupied spaces and remnants of those who remain long after they are gone.

In an interview at the Parrish, James explained that the installation came about when she found furniture pieces that were identical to those she grew up with. Though the furniture itself is not historically significant or particularly valuable, the pieces represent the emotional richness of family ties and the importance such objects can play in preserving legacies.

“My aunts passed the china cabinet down to my mother. It was a real adult rite of passage,” James said. “For my mom, when my aunt gave her the cabinet, it signified it was an honor to take care of it.

“My mom’s no longer here. She’s passed. I thought about how much we put into objects. When that person is no longer there, the chair holds the presence of that person.”

James came across the china cabinet online and when she went to see it in person, learned that the man selling it had inherited it from a family member.

“I got chills when I went to visit,” she said. “I could see the emotion in him in giving it to me. I also felt a responsibility for it. It was like the piece found me.”

Initially, James was intending to leave the cabinet untouched, but then she felt the need to cover it with the papier maché, transforming it into an altar of sorts.

“I’m taking this family tradition,” she said. “Making it into art gives it value and new importance. As a family, we either gathered between the kitchen or dining room. The frame around it felt like a framework of the house — what happens within the four walls.”

In some ways, it feels as though by imposing her unique imprint onto the piece, James is finding a way to move on — as we all must do in life. In fact, her 10-year-old son, Greyson, was at the Parrish with her during the installation process and is the literal next generation. With the addition of pulp and paint, rather than treating the familial objects like revered relics from the past that can’t be touched or altered by the living, James is bringing her own spirit, and that of her son’s, into the conversation.

“I don’t think this piece is grieving my mother,” she said. “I feel like the grieving process sways. It’s a re-visitation of her energy. As I was working on it, I was thinking of her, calling her energy. I feel she’s there.”

Likewise, the portraits on the wall surrounding the installation may feel specific and identifiable, but they are, in fact, hints of ancestors and those who came before. James describes them as “the faces that cannot be photographed.”

“It feels more like an energy. I feel they’re all aunties,” said James glancing at the portraits on the gallery wall. “‘These are my ghosts to sit with.’ I felt like they were holding that space.

“I think the family history is with us and the stories,” she added. “All families have stories we tell to keep us together and that’s part of the history and the blood. The objects become tangible things to hold, to bring us back in time. I think the value is in our hearts.”

“Set It Off” is on view at the Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, through July 24. Curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas, it features the work of Leilah Babirye, Torkwase Dyson, February James, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Karyn Olivier and Kennedy Yanko. For more information visit parrishart.org.