Abigail DeVille, 2020
In partnership with FRONT International 2022
Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art
Oh God of Dust and Rainbows
Presenting Abigail DeVille
On view July 16- October 2, 2022
Euclid Gallery
About Abigail DeVille’s Installation
Inspired by Langston Hughes’s first book of poems for young people, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932), Abigail DeVille will create a multifaceted sculptural installation that will include DeVille’s own work alongside the work of local collaborators and a wide-ranging selection of borrowed objects. Anchored at The Sculpture Center and branching into other locations in Cleveland, The Dream Keeper will explore the city’s material and cultural histories, guided by the question: Who are the dream keepers in Cleveland?
Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations designed to bring attention to these forgotten stories, such as with the sculpture she built on the site of a former African American burial ground in Harlem.
Read more about Abigail DeVille here.
About FRONT
Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows embraces art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process. The title is an homage to the 1957 poem “Two Somewhat Different Epigrams” by Langston Hughes, who moved to Cleveland in his childhood and maintained an artistic connection to the region. Spanning over twenty sites in Cleveland, Akron, and Oberlin, the exhibition bears witness to the region’s past and present scars, from the environmental degradation caused by industrial production to police violence and urban fracture. Yet alongside interlocking public and personal crises, healing is contemporary Cleveland’s biggest industry.
Launched in 2018, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a free, public, contemporary art exhibition comprising artist commissions, performances, films, and public programs. Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, the second iteration of FRONT International will run from July 16 through October 2, 2022. Building on the success of the first edition, FRONT 2022 furthers the Triennial’s commitment to the belief that by supporting creative communities and stimulating new cultural encounters in the region, contemporary art can be an important catalyst for positive social change.
