Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves Opening

The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announces the opening of a new exhibition, Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves, on view from October 21, 2023, through September 7, 2025.

Molina, an artist who works across media and disciplines with an emphasis on care and social justice, will make all new work for the exhibition, including a rug, a bench, textile artworks, papier mâché sculpture, and papier mâché furniture to be created in collaboration with Skidmore College students. Molina is the fifth artist to transform the Tang Mezzanine into a community hangout space, breaking down traditional barriers between visitors and museums by inviting tactile engagement with the art and the use of the gallery for conversation and contemplation. Over the course of two years, Molina’s site-specific installation will evolve while remaining centered around the four elements—earth, air, water, fire—and a fifth constituent, the cosmos. Molina’s work reminds us that all earthly beings are made of star stuff and that in the entangled circles of life, care is equally as important for ourselves as for all life forms.

Molina’s exhibition will also include work by invited artists, bringing together multiple perspectives, styles, and materials, and regularly re-energizing the installation’s balance between comfort and provocation. For the first iteration of the exhibition, Molina has invited two New York-based artists: Bel Falleiros, who was born in Brazil and whose work focuses on place and belonging, and Cinthya Santos-Briones, who was born in Mexico and is a visual artist, educator, and cultural organizer with indigenous Nahua roots. Future artists will be announced later.

The exhibition will open on Saturday, October 21, at 10:30 am, with One Only Earth: A Grounding Ritual. For this public event, Falleiros and Molina will lead a ritual ceremony in the exhibition before moving outside to welcome the elements and create a sacred space. Later that day, at 5 pm, a public reception will celebrate Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves and all the other exhibitions at the Tang.

Previous Tang Mezzanine artists were Liz Collins (2015–17), Kamau Amu Patton (2017–19), Nicole Cherubini (2019–21), and Lauren Kelley (2021–23).

Admission to the Tang is free. For more information, contact the Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit https://tang.skidmore.edu.