Tacita Dean, Ilana Harris-Babou
Episode No. 694 features artists Tacita Dean and Ilana Harris-Babou. The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "Tacita Dean: Blind Folly," the first major museum survey of Dean's work in the United States. The exhibition examines a range of Dean's production, with a special emphasis on her drawing practice. "Blind Folly" includes new works informed by Dean's time in Houston, including her residency at (and in!) the Menil's Cy Twombly Gallery. It is on view through April 19. The Menil, MACK, and Dean have produced several books related to the Menil exhibition: Why Cy, an artist's book of images Dean produced during her residency in the Twombly Gallery. Within it is a small booklet of notes and drawings that Dean conceived during the same residency. Tacita Dean: Blind Folly, a book by exhibition curator Michelle White that addresses Dean's practice and oeuvre in a strikingly legible, almost narrative way. Why Cy is available from Amazon for about $95; White's Blind Folly is available from Amazon for about $28 - or just $10 on Kindle. Dean is one of Britain's most celebrated artists. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums such as the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. In 2011 Dean's work FILM was shown in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Harris-Babou's 2018 Reparation Hardware is included within "Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica" at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which was curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, survey's Pan-Africanism's cultural manifestations across 350 objects made over the last 100 or so years. It is on view through March 30. Reparation Hardware, which was made for DIS.ART, is streamed below. Harris-Babou has been included in group shows at the Wellcome Collection, London, Apex Art, New York, and at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. Her work is in the collections of museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.