Upcoming Exhibitions
- On view beginning May 23, 2026
- Building 4.1
Spatial Poems is a trio of exhibitions developed by CEI Fellow Marissa Del Toro, who aims to disrupt the art world’s usual curatorial structures by inviting guest curators Ninabah Winton and Jamillah Hinson to collaborate on a communal composition.
Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘precarios’ serve as the overarching conceptual framework for the three interrelated projects, with curators and artists responding to the many themes Vicuña’s works evoke. The artists and artworks explore ephemerality, memory, and cyclical repetition through a range of materials and compositional approaches.
Together, the projects can be understood as a score or spatial poem, created by curators and artists working in a euphonious rhythm. Spatial Poems inspires a dialogue on care, social relations, and the organization of new forms of being and processes as an act of refusal to the current precaritization of the art world.
Cecilia Vicuña: union of three
Curated by Marissa Del Toro
Cecilia Vicuña: union of three is rooted in the artist’s 60-year art practice of ‘precarios’ or ‘Arte Precario’—small assemblages made from discarded and fragmented materials conceptually foregrounded in ephemerality, intangibility, and evanescence. Born in 1948 in Santiago, Chile, and based in New York City, the pioneering visual artist, poet, filmmaker, and activist has focused on various political issues, from the fascist Pinochet era of Chile to the present environmental destruction. Cecilia Vicuña: union of three presents a selection of ‘precario’ and quipu sculptures, including her monumental Quipu Desaparecido 2 / Disappeared Quipu 2 (2018) and Balsa Snake Raft to Escape the Flood (2017), alongside films, texts, and sound.
Lola Ayisha Ogbara: Scars Insist on Being Remembered
Curated by Jamillah Hinson in collaboration with Marissa Del Toro
Lola Ayisha Ogbara; Scars Insist on Being Remembered is an exercise in care that explores Black movement, veneration, and sonic experimentation, presented through imagined geographies and naturally forming archives rooted in the artistic and cultural traditions of post-structuralism in Black American and African diasporic communities. With a conceptual practice standing at the intersection of non-Western epistemologies and bodily topographies, Ogbara explores the philosophical poetics of the scar as both a visual language of fugivity and an imprint of resistance through material and compositional investigations.
Sam Frésquez: *
Curated by Ninabah Winton
In ” * “, Sam Frésquez invites viewers into a dreamlike exploration of nested realities — a literal and metaphorical journey through time, memory, and intergenerational knowledge. Beginning with a life-sized kitchen that visitors can physically enter, the installation unfolds as a sequence of seven increasingly miniaturized versions of the same space. Each contains meticulously crafted furnishings that shrink proportionally, until reaching the smallest room, which is merely inches tall. This recursive architectural experience creates a visual tunnel that allows viewers to contemplate the compression and expansion of lived histories.
Curated by Marissa Del Toro, Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow, MASS MoCA with guest curators Jamillah Hinson and Ninabah Winton.
Spatial Poems is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI). The CEI is an exploratory pilot for how contemporary museums work collaboratively with curators and artists, whose diverse practices and knowledge can be exchanged, supported, and deepened. The three-year program invites six curators to realize curatorial projects at MASS MoCA and in the North Adams community. The CEI is generously supported through leadership gifts from Sarah Arison and the Arison Arts Foundation, Michi Jigarjian, Denise Sobel, the Teiger Foundation, and Yukiko and Anders Schroeder. Additional support is provided by the Director’s Catalyst Fund, with generous contributions from Greg and Anne Avis, Kelly and Bill Kaiser, Steve and Lisa Jenks, Bob Gold, and an anonymous donor.