Curated by Susan Cross

“The fragile, the forgotten, the flawed, the fugitive”—with this alliterative litany, Cauleen Smith announces the themes and preoccupations of her work. This summer, Smith will fill MASS MoCA’s first-floor galleries with video, textiles, a written manifesto, works on paper, and a selection from her “In the Wake” series of hand-stitched banners that dotted the infamous 2017 Whitney Biennial. At the heart of this swirl of mediums and messages will be an immersive installation composed of projections and still lifes—furniture, statuettes, foliage—that summon the appalling delirium and revolutionary possibilities of ecological catastrophe. This is a disaster so total that it will require a reordering of our political values and a thrust toward a new and unimaginable world. To quote Smith: “Can you feel the Earth rotating around the sun? This is your spaceship. Act accordingly.”

— Tobi Haslett