“I’m interested in the passage from one thing to another,” artist Tadáskía has said. Change, or mudança, in Tadáskía’s native Brazilian Portuguese, lies at the center of her multidisciplinary work. Across drawing, sculpture, and other mediums, she foregrounds improvisation, conveying a sense of fluidity through her dynamic mark-making, nuanced imagery, and kaleidoscopic palette.
Projects: Tadáskía features the artist’s expansive unbound book, ave preta mística mystical black bird (2022), which places freeform drawings in dialogue with her own poetic, bilingual text. From one sheet to the next, we follow the narrative’s winged protagonist on a flight “towards a journey of freedom,” informed by the artist’s lived experience as a Black trans woman.
For this exhibition, the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States, she has produced a monumental wall drawing and a set of sculptures in response to the gallery space. While her vigorous mark-making encourages us to trace her coursing, shifting lines, the organic materials used in her sculptures evoke the ephemeral life cycles of nature. Alongside the central role of change, as Tadáskía asserts, “the main character in the work is time.”
The exhibition is organized by Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Ana Torok, the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, with the assistance of Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant, the Studio Museum in Harlem.
