Arts and Letters

In recent years, Rhea Dillon (b. 1996; London, UK) has been thinking through Caribbean concepts of family and the histories that land can hold. In this exhibition, new works made with natural materials significant to Jamaica rest on wooden bookshelves or hang on the paneled walls as an intervention in the Library of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. With the sculptures, Dillon transforms a domestic object into a minimal form. Interested in the mutability of gesture, she constructed the sculptures with materials that resist cohesion, causing them to morph and decay over time. Likewise, a work on paper simultaneously suggests the stem of a leaf, a suture, or a route. This kind of slippage is fundamental to Dillon’s work.

For this exhibition, the artist’s first institutional show in the United States, Dillon chose objects from Arts and Letters’s archive to accompany her work. Her selection features books from our collection by current or former members, including Malcolm Cowley, Toni Morrison, and Claudia Rankine. To supplement racial and geographic absences in the institution’s membership, Dillon also presents books by nonmember writers from the Caribbean or of Caribbean descent.

Throughout the show, Dillon will send small works and ephemera through the postal service, extending her exhibition beyond the walls of the Arts and Letters Library. To participate in this mailing project, please sign up here.

Arts and Letters will host an opening celebration for the exhibition on Saturday, September 27, from 4 to 7pm. All are welcome. Please let us know if you plan to attend here.

Heads is organized by Noa Wesley, Assistant Curator. Support for the exhibition is provided by Desiree and Olivier Berggruen and members of Arts and Letters.