Page 201 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

AND EVER AN EDGE: WORK
BY JEFFREY MERIS, DEVIN N.
MORRIS, AND CHARISSE
PEARLINA WESTON

IN THE FIFTH ITERATION OF A MULTIYEAR COLLABORATION
BETWEEN THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM, THE MUSEUM
OF MODERN ART, AND MOMA PS1, THE STUDIO MUSEUM
PRESENT ITS ANNUAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE EXHIBITION AT
MOMA PS1. AND EVER AN EDGE: STUDIO MUSEUM ARTISTS
IN RESIDENCE FEATURE NEW WORK BY THE COHORT OF THE
STUDIO MUSEUM’S FOUNDATIONAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM,
ARTISTS JEFFREY MERIS (B. 1991, HAITI), DEVIN N. MORRIS (B.
1986, BALTIMORE, MD), AND CHARISSE PEARLINA WESTON (B.
1988, HOUSTON, TX).
Charisse Pearlina Weston (b. 1988, Houston, TX) the lime green flourescent tint edge
of bitter (let's straighten it out) 2023 Inkjet print on Hahnemühle canvas etched with
glass from collapse, frit, blown glass, and resin 40×36×8" (101.6×91.4×20.3 cm).
Courtesy the artist

And ever an edge explores the relationships between histories of materials and everyday objects to create works that explore how
displacement and Black methods of resistance. Working across material can function as a mode of storytelling. The multimedia
sculpture, painting, installation, and performance, these artists use sculptures and two-dimensional works featured in the exhibition
familiar and found materials to highlight that which is often imply the presence of a body while asking the viewer to confront
overlooked. Considering the architectures of the built and natural their relationship to the physical form. Through exploring the
environments, the artists examine the precarities of navigating capacity of objects to serve as an index of care, Meris’s practice
space, and the restorative act of making and claiming space. The negotiates fractured yet tender relationships to the built world
works in this exhibition thus challenge us to consider how we see, and the tools and practices we engage to tend to it and ourselves.
feel, and move through the world. In celebration of the opening Devin N. Morris’s immersive installation evokes the parks, streets,
of And ever an edge, a roundtable discussion with the artists in and places of dwelling found in and around Harlem. The work
residence, Jeffrey Meris, Devin N. Morris, and Charisse Pearlina collapses the distinction between public and private space as
Weston. Jeffrey Meris reworks, fuses, and retools architectural experienced through the urban landscape. By using discarded
objects, Morris participates in the practice of collecting as a
Installation view of And ever an edge: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2022–23 form of care, sustaining the life of an object by reinscribing it into
on view at MoMA PS1 from November 16, 2023 through April 8, 2024. Image courtesy
MoMA PS1 and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo: Kris Graves imaginative new forms. In doing so, Morris asks us to consider the
complex intimacies revealed by the detritus of our lives.
Charisse Pearlina Weston uses glass as a conceptual framework
for exploring the precarity of Black life when confronted by
sociopolitical tactics of surveillance and architectural containment.
The folds, breaks, and bends that occur through the process of
making this work, as well as inscriptions of barely visible texts and
digitally abstracted photographs onto their surface, challenge the
legibility of the translucent material. Through this practice, Weston
explores withholding and Black interiority as acts of resistance.
And ever an edge: Studio Museum Artists in Residence is
organized by Yelena Keller, Assistant Curator, the Studio Museum
in Harlem; and Jody Graf, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.

WORLD of ART 201