Hive
Nancy Davidson and Lakshmi Ramgopal
Krannert Art Museum’s Kinkead Pavilion
Commissioned by Krannert Art Museum
Co-curated with Clara Bosak-Schroeder
January 30, 2020 - May 16, 2021
With soft pink inflatable sculptures, ambient lighting, and breathy sounds, Hive remakes the experience of KAM’s Kinkead Pavilion, a 1988 postmodern addition to the museum designed by architect Larry Booth. Hive is visible 24-hours a day with a lighting component overnight.
For New York-based sculptor and Illinois native Nancy Davidson, the architecture’s large scale, classicizing columns,and inscribed frieze provide an opportunity to envision maidens and goddesses in a temple setting. Davidson’s playfully rounded bilateral sculptures draw inspiration from Artemis of Ephesus, the cult goddess of the ancient Mediterranean who was pictured with multiple breast-like forms—possibly intended as a beehive or bull testicles—to symbolize her fertility. Davidson also refers to the elaborate braids of caryatids: women-shaped structural supports for ancient Greek, Roman, and later classicizing architecture including the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Named after a region called Caryae in the Greek Peloponnese, the caryatids represent young women who held ritual dances for the goddess Artemis.
Roman historian and multidisciplinary artist Lakshmi Ramgopal completes the installation with sound. Deep inhales, sighs, clicks, and hums reverberate and clip through the space. To make the work, Ramgopal recorded vocalizations from non-binary and women-identified collaborators, some of whom live with disabilities and chronic illness. Focusing on bodily breath and questioning what constitutes a feminine sound, Ramgopal placed sound files into a database that a computer algorithm randomizes for playback.
Hive situates questions of gender identity, embodied and affective feeling, and racialized interpretations of classical material in a university art museum. (While Greek and Roman sculpture is often depicted as hyperwhite, it was originally brightly colored.)The installation resounds with color, suggesting a world of light, movement, and sound in which feminized organisms act through and despite the structures seeking to contain them.
Lighting design: Niles Fromm
Fabrication: Landmark Creations
Additional vocals: Violet Eckles-Jordan, Nivedita Gunturi, Rosé Hernandez, Olivia Hickner, Lucy Little, Erica Miller, Shakthi Ramgopal
Sound technician: Alex Inglizian
Curated by Amy L. Powell and Clara Bosak-Schroeder