R.I.P. Tees: A Meditation on the Archive of Mourning
Led by Lachell Workman at Outlooks: Heather Hart
Friday, August 4 & Saturday, August 5, both at 6PM

Lachell Workman will be presenting a process-driven performance entitled “R.I.P. Tees: A Meditation on the Archive of Mourning”. This explorative performance will consider the geographies of public and private monuments as they relate to inner-city spaces marked by memorialization and Storm King’s new addition of Outlooks: Heather Hart. R.I.P. Tees extends from Workman’s textile-based, t-shirt works embarked upon during her 2016 residency at the Shandaken Project. Within Workman’s practice she considers the multiplicity of the memorial t-shirt as a cartographic corporeal marker. Workman points to the radical, performative possibilities of bridging literature, verbal testimony, installation and oratorical history.

“Through a material investigation of ephemera and infrastructural materials, I am exploring what it means to visualize and construct a memorial within visible and hidden spaces. Many of these sites I describe as “empty,” “invisible” and “hidden in plain sight.” Sculpture and installation have served as my foundation for instigating complex narratives of monuments as they exist within public and private spaces. I am particularly interested in the formal and aesthetic language of the street side memorial and the cultural coding of the “R.I.P. T-shirt.” This work shows up in my practice as a series of questions: what constitutes a memorial, a public monument and who, specifically, are the people and events that matter enough to be publicly memorialized?”

Lachell Workman (b. 1989, Stratford, CT) is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York and Connecticut. She received her BFA in Photography from the University of Connecticut in 2011, and her MFA from SUNY Purchase College in 2015. Her work consists of photographic and sculptural installations that challenge hegemonic historical discourses. Her practice considers ritualistic practices of mourning and memorialization within inner-city spaces as a site for radical visibility. Through deconstructing ephemera such as the family snapshots, t-shirts and infrastructural materials, she works to disrupt and narratives of grief from a disproportionate trauma weighted in the black body. Her recent exhibitions include THREE. At We Buy Gold (2017), Where We Land, The Union for Contemporary Art, Queering Space at Yale University (2016), and Dineo Seshee Bopape, “Untitled (of the occult instability) [feelings]”, at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2016). She has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Lighthouse Works, The Shandaken Project at Storm King Art Center, Ox-Bow School of Art and the Vermont Studio Center.

Presented with The Shandaken Project.

Initiated in 2013 by the Art Center, Wanderings & Wonderings invites visitors to engage with artists in creative and unexpected ways. Participating artists have created tours, maps, performances, poetry and movement workshops, new media, and deeply thoughtful conversations. Since 2015, Wanderings and Wonderings has been co-presented The Shandaken Project, and features select alumnae residents and their collaborators.

Wanderings & Wonderings and artist talks are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.