Book Signing with Paula Wilson

Tamarind is delighted to welcome 2021 artist-in-residence Paula Wilson for a book signing on the occasion of her first major monograph, Toward the Sky’s Back Door, published by Tang Teaching Museum and DelMonico Books/D.A.P. Wilson will speak on her work and sign copies of Toward the Sky’s Back Door at Tamarind on Thursday, March 13, 5–7pm. Four works made over Wilson’s 2021 residency will be on view, including Catching the Night (2021). Copies of Wilson's monograph will be available for purchase at Tamarind.

“This book comes out of my life in Carrizozo, New Mexico," writes the artist, "and the exhibitions it documents— its screen-printed cover, layered textures, and detailed images show the process of making and transformation. It exists through collaboration, from the curator’s vision to the authors’ words and the designers’ sensory compositions—a shared act of creation. I’m honored to launch this book at Tamarind, not only because our print Catching the Night is prominently featured within its pages, but also because it carries the same playful spirit of material exploration and partnership that defines Tamarind’s approach to artmaking.”

Toward the Sky’s Back Door features nearly two decades of work by the American artist, who frequently intermixes her identity as a Black biracial artist with narratives and motifs across time and place. The monograph documents her wide-ranging career with essays by leading scholars Taylor Renee Aldridge, Ebony Y. Rhodes and Stephanie Sparling Williams, and a new interview with the artist. Wilson embraces a both/and approach to art and living, using the same techniques, materials and motifs to make rugs and clothing as she does for art on the gallery wall. Throughout her work, little to nothing is discarded, with scraps from one artwork recycled into another, reflecting both a practice of eco-sustainability and a model for creating something new from fragments left behind. This volume presents paintings, sculpture, prints, collages and videos, with different mediums frequently intermixed in a single work, ranging in scale from small paper-mosaic work to beyond-life-size female figures.

Copies of Toward the Sky's Back Door will be available for purchase at Tamarind.

Host or Publisher Tamarind Institute