Join us for the book launch of Julia Phillips’ first monograph Energy Exchange (Mousse, 2023), featuring a conversation between the artist and scholar and writer Nana Adusei-Poku. The event includes two commissioned performances: Sweat to melt your heart by S. Tai Tai and On Falling, Part IV by Eli Greene.

Inspired by tools and functional objects, the sculptures of Julia Phillips are metaphors for social and psychological experiences. These metaphors are both mechanical and bodily, and the experiences they describe typically focus on power relations between individuals or between an individual and an institution.

A reception will follow the event; copies of Energy Exchange will be available in the Graham Foundation bookshop.

Julia Phillips was born in Hamburg and lives and works in Chicago and Berlin. She has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York and Kunstverein Braunschweig, and was featured in the Berlin Biennial, the New Museum Triennial, and the 59th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, Venice. Her work has been shown at museums including the MUSEUM für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her work is held in numerous public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Phillips recently completed her first public art commission titled Observer, Observed for the High Line, New York, and her work will be included in the Whitney Biennial 2024.

Nana Adusei-Poku is an assistant professor in the Department of History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her research interests include how cultural changes are articulated at the intersections of art, politics and popular culture, artistic productions from the Black Diaspora and curatorial practice as a research tool for shaping art historical discourses.

Eli Greene holds a bachelor of arts from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of Chicago. Through image, object, and performance, her practice traces the act of one thing becoming another. Greene’s recent work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Smart Museum of Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Regards, Goldfinch, and Produce Model. She lives and works in Chicago.

S. Tai Tai (Tina Wang) is an artist based in Chicago and Los Angeles, with roots in other parts of the US (California and New York) Taiwan, and Latin America. She makes installations—sculptures and photographs)—that are activated in movement-based performance. Negotiating a freedom in self-expression with the fragility of belonging (to society) are key themes in her work. For more information about her pedigree, visit taitaistudios.com/bio.

Photo: Julia Phillips, Negotiator (#1), 2020. Ceramic, stainless steel, marble, 77 × 59 × 79 in. Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.