Jamaican-born artist Nari Ward uses everyday material from his New York neighborhood — plastic garbage bags, fire hoses, glass bottles, abandoned baby strollers — “to address issues related to consumer culture, poverty, and race.” More recent works incorporate oil drums, discarded doors, dried salted codfish, and old television sets to comment on immigration, religion, sex, and patriotism.
Ward is currently an artist-in-residency at the LSU College of Art + Design in Baton Rouge, and his solo exhibition, Rooted Communities, is on view at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibition will include one installation which was made with his LSU students. Ward’s been seen around town rummaging through scrapyards like the Caterpillar “graveyard” in search of sculpture materials.
Nari Ward, We the People, 2011. In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Used and hand dyed shoelaces. Lehmann Maupin Gallery
