Art & Art History
Rest and Labor: A Gravity Pleasure Switchback Tour
Gallery 400
Join Gallery 400 and Assistant Professor in Black Studies Jaira Harrington for a tour of Gravity Pleasure Switchback. The tour centers the entangled relationships of rest and labor as expressed in artist Derrick Woods Morrow’s work alongside our own lives. Harrington and our staff each respond to a specific artwork from the exhibition, drawing from their own practice to activate the space and imagine possibilities for respite in the never-ending hustle of modern life.
The first major solo exhibition of Derrick Woods-Morrow, Gravity Pleasure Switchback manifests itself as a euphoric dream state containing the phases and spaces inhabited by Black American Southerners. Woods-Morrow engages everyday materials to accentuate the vast shine, grit, and tangible labor being performed in private domesticity. Wavering between life and death, rest and the hustle of everyday life, the exhibition is grounded in the exploration of the body as a place of boundless possibility.
ABOUT
Dr. Jaira J. Harrington (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Prior to this faculty position, Dr. Harrington served as a 2017-18 William J. Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar in Brazil. Dr. Harrington earned her doctorate in Political Science in the subfield of Comparative Politics at the University of Chicago. Her current research and writing focuses on the union organizing of domestic workers in unions in Brasília, São Paulo, and Salvador.
ACCESS INFORMATION: This program is free and open to the public. For questions and access accommodations, email gallery400engagement@gmail.com.