A Walk Through “Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water”

For her solo exhibition at The Shed, Howardena Pindell presented “Rope/Fire/Water,” her first video in 25 years and a project unrealized by the artist since the 1970s that The Shed commissioned. In this powerful work, Pindell recounts personal anecdotes and anthropological and historical data related to lynchings and racist attacks in the United States. She accompanies this voice-over with archival photos of lynchings and the historic Birmingham, Alabama, Children’s Crusade, a series of nonviolent protests carried out by young people in May 1963. Over her nearly 60-year career, Pindell has created richly textured abstract paintings while engaging with politics and the social issues of her time. In the exhibition, Pindell will also debut a pair of large-scale paintings related to global atrocities of imperialism and white supremacy, and several abstract paintings that demonstrate a through line in Pindell’s practice: after working on traumatic historical projects, the artist decompresses by creating meticulously produced, large-scale abstract works on unstretched canvas.