Grounds For Sculpture: Slow Motion

Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) will present Slow Motion, an exhibition that expands the boundaries of contemporary sculpture through the use of unconventional materials and processes.

Five artists were selected to respond to the exhibition’s central question: “How do we remake our relationship with monuments?” The artists were chosen based on several key criteria: use of unconventional materials; ability to embrace playfulness in their creative practice; and the incorporation of accessibility, inclusivity, and equity lenses in their work.

Each artist’s work will underscore how materials are not just a medium for monumental work; materials carry meanings themselves, functioning as symbols of specific places, memories, scents, and feelings.

Billy Dufala is an interdisciplinary artist in Philadelphia and co-founder of Recycled Artists in Residence (RAIR). Dufala’s practice offers a playful and critical approach to the twin problems of material waste and exploitative land use. Future Futures, a site-specific sculpture made of recycled aluminum bales, is a temporary monument that functions as both a material commodity and a staged “performance.” Following the closing of the exhibition, the sculpture will be dismantled and these materials will be reintroduced into the commodities market.

Ana Teresa Fernández is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Mexico, now based in San Francisco, who will exhibit her work SHHH. This 7-foot-high series of letters is covered in 1,800 suspended golden acrylic mirrors which both react to and reflect back their surrounding environment. SHHH is a monument to the silence of cultures and habitats as sea levels rise and coastlines disappear, a future memorial to what will inevitably be lost.

Colette Fu is an artist and a paper engineer born in New Jersey and based in Philadelphia, best known for the creation of pop-up books. For this exhibition, Fu will create Noodle Mountain, a large-scale pop-up book that illuminates the long history of noodles, a complex culinary connection to experiences of immigration, labor, and collective identity formations in the Chinese diaspora. In her work, Fu has long considered the material life cycles of archives and experimented with the materialization of stories and memories through non-conventional practices.

Omar Tate, who is well-known for his culinary creations, identifies as an artist who uses food as one of his many mediums. His work is rooted in the values of nourishment and the reclamation of Black food traditions and cultural aesthetics that can be experienced through his Philadelphia-based grocery and catering business, Honeysuckle Projects, which Tate co-owns and operates alongside his wife Cybille St. Aude-Tate. For Slow Motion, Tate will work within the culinary spaces of Grounds For Sculpture to design an experience that speaks to the way that smells, taste, and sight can be poetic entry points to share memories.

Sandy Williams IV is a multidisciplinary artist who will also create new work for this exhibition connected to their Wax Monuments series. In this ongoing project, recognizable public monuments that are made in traditional and durable materials are recast in wax and positioned on a stage inspired by the steps from the Lincoln Memorial. These monuments, which normally convey a sense of permanence and immutability, will be periodically melted throughout the exhibition.

Founded in 2012, Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia, which cultivates and facilitates critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments.

As visitors experience the exhibition, they will be invited to slow down and re-examine how they might remake their relationships with public monuments. Monument Lab will prepare an engagement space within the exhibition to explore key themes addressed in this project, offering opportunities for active participation and reflection.

Slow Motion will be on display for more than a year, from May 5 through September 1, 2025.

Location

Name: Grounds for Sculpture
Address: 80 Sculptors Way
City: Hamilton