Art Talk: Rebecca Morris and Jamillah James (ASL)

On the occasion of the survey exhibition Rebecca Morris: 2001-2022, we invite you to a conversation that examines over 20 years of the artist’s abstract painting practice with curator Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Rebecca Morris (b.1969, Honolulu, HI) has been the subject of significant solo exhibitions at the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2019); Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Holland (2014); and The Renaissance Society (2005). Her work has been included in numerous group shows, including Inherent Structure, Wexner Center for the Arts (2018), Made in L.A.:, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014). Other solo shows include those at 356 Mission Rd. and LAXART, both in Los Angeles. Her work is in various public collections, including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL.

Morris is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Bortolami Gallery, and Galerie Barbara Weiss. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Art, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and Art Matters Inc., among others.

Jamillah James is Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She was co-curator (with Margot Norton) of Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York. Previously, James was Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA); Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Queens Museum, New York, in addition to producing exhibitions and programs at various alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the US and Canada. She has curated major surveys of Rebecca Morris (Rebecca Morris: 2001-2022, opening October 2022); Nayland Blake (No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake, 2019); and B. Wurtz (This Has No Name, 2018); several thematic group exhibitions, including Enter the Mirror (2022), The Inconstant World (2021), A Shape That Stands Up (2016), and sisters and brothers (2014); and solo exhibitions of Lucas Blalock, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sara Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, rafa esparza, Ann Greene Kelly, Maryam Jafri, Stanya Kahn, Simone Leigh, and Harold Mendez, among others. James is a recipient of the inaugural Noah Davis Prize from the Underground Museum, Los Angeles and Chanel Culture Fund (2021), a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2021), and a Curatorial Fellowship for the VIA Art Foundation (2018). She has contributed to Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art and numerous exhibition catalogues, and regularly lectures on contemporary art, curating, and professional development for emerging artists.