Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door

Paula Wilson, Catching the Night, 2021, printed at Tamarind Institute, fourteen-color lithograph with chine collé, 32 × 23 inches, Tang Teaching Museum collection, purchase, 2022.10

Installation view, Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door, Tang Teaching Museum, 2023, photo by Mindy McDaniel

Paula Wilson, Salty & Fresh, 2014, digital video, 8:04 minutes, Tang Teaching Museum collection, purchase, 2020.11.7

Installation view, Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door, Tang Teaching Museum, 2023, photo by Mindy McDaniel

Paula Wilson, Remodeled, 2007, relief woodcut, offset lithography and silkscreen with collaged element, handcoloring, 25 x 29 inches, courtesy of artist

Paula Wilson, Light It Up, 2019, acrylic, printing ink (monotype, woodblock, lithograph), and oil on muslin and canvas with video insert, 61 ¾ × 69 ¼ inches, collection of Jill Bialosky

Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door breaks down perceived boundaries to connect global and local narratives through subjects as wide-ranging as the moth that pollinates Yucca plants, ancient Greek vases, West African D’mba, and modern technologies. The exhibition presents paintings, sculpture, prints, collages, and videos—with different media frequently intermixed in a single work, including a new monumental figure being shown for the first time. Using the same techniques and styles to make art for viewing on the gallery wall as for the rugs she walks on and clothes she wears, Wilson challenges the separations between art and everyday living. Often biographically oriented, her work investigates the polarities of human life, including her own identity as a biracial woman and her experiences living in both major metropolises and the small desert railroad town of Carrizozo, New Mexico.

Wilson’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, and is in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Albuquerque Museum, the New York Public Library, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Tang Teaching Museum, among others. Born in Chicago, Wilson earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and MFA from Columbia University in New York. She is the cofounder of the artist-run organizations Carrizozo Artist-in-Residency and MoMAZoZo.

The exhibition title comes from a poem by Robin Coste Lewis, “Let Me Live in a House by the Side of the Road and Be a Friend to Man.”

Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door is organized by Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara in collaboration with the artist and is supported by Friends of the Tang. The exhibition was also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The exhibition travels to the California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles, and be on view May 22 to August 18, 2024.