Online: Verbal Description Tours with Emilie L. Gossiaux and sonia louise davis

Visitors who are blind or have low vision are invited to join Emilie L. Gossiaux and sonia louise davis in a virtual verbal description tour of their respective exhibitions, Other-Worlding and to reverberate tenderly. Using various media and approaches across sculpture, drawing, painting, figuration, abstraction, and improvisation, Gossiaux and davis find common ground in their pursuit of softness and joy as a mode of resistance. Join these two artists as they each verbally describe three works from their solo exhibitions and discuss their work with participants.

Emilie L. Gossiaux: Other-Worlding celebrates the autonomy that guide dogs and the white cane provide the blind and low-vision community in navigating a world predominantly designed for sighted people. Central to this exhibition is the question: can we imagine another world where unity is co-built across species and disability status? Through large-scale sculptural installation and drawings, Gossiaux creates a world beyond the hierarchical structures of capitalism and ableism.

sonia louise davis: to reverberate tenderly focuses on improvisation as a crucial practice of care, resilience, and self-determination in the face of systemic injustices. Situated within a lineage of Black feminist abstraction and avant-garde music, davis’ invented graphic notation system invites new ways of resonating, vibrating, gesturing, listening, and responding. Throughout the exhibition, davis presents this visual vocabulary in tufted soft paintings, a site-specific mural with neons, sculptural instruments, and performances that engage with the process of improvisation as a generative and emancipatory form of research.

This two-hour program will be facilitated by Sarah Cho, Assistant Curator. The virtual description tour will be accessible by Zoom link or by dial-in, depending on your preference.

RSVP Required via Zoom. Please sign up using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqf-2sqzsuH93YFKcwLbEHrghhDSPCw9YV

For questions or assistance registering for the program, please email accessibility@queensmuseum.org or call 718 592 9700 x 247

About the Artists:

sonia louise davis (b. 1988, New York, NY) earned her BA with honors in African American Studies from Wesleyan University and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She is a 2023-2024 Artist in Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her latest solo exhibition, resonant frequencies, blossoming tones, at Hesse Flatow (NY) was listed a “must see” by Artforum in 2022. She has presented her work at the Whitney Museum (NY), ACRE (Chicago), Sadie Halie Projects (Minneapolis), Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn),  and Artists Space (NY), among other venues. Residencies and fellowships include the Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship, Civitella Ranieri, New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice, and Stoneleaf Retreat. Her newest book, slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one) was published in 2021 by Co—Conspirator Press, which operates out of the Feminist Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles. Sonia lives and works in Harlem.

Emilie L. Gossiaux (b. 1989 New Orleans, LA) lives and works in New York City. Gossiaux earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2014, and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019. Her solo shows include Memory of a Body (2020) and Significant Otherness (2022) at Mother Gallery, among others. Select group exhibitions include Crip Time, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt (2021); Greater New York, MoMA PS1 (2021); and 52 Artists, A Feminist Milestone, The Aldrich Contemporary (2022); among others. Gossiaux was awarded a John F. Kennedy Center’s VSA Prize (2013), the Wynn Newhouse Award (2019), a NYFA Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant (2021), the Colene Brown Art Prize (2022), and The Pébéo Production Prize (2023). Her work has been featured in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, The New Yorker, Art in America, and Topical Cream Magazine.