Exhibition - Assembly 2024: Horizon Scanning

Featured artists: Nyame O. Brown, Everything is Collective, Allegra Hangen, Elisa Harkins, Marnie Ellen Hertzler, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Cesar Lopez, Jovencio de la Paz, Kenya (Robinson), Benjy Russell, Shelby Shadwell, Keith Tolch, Lily Xie, and X

Curated by Blair Murphy and Jared Packard

In a time of multiple, overlapping, and seemingly perpetual crises, the 2024 iteration of MoCA Arlington’s national biennial brings together artists whose work can help us grapple with our tumultuous present by offering strategies to navigate and reimagine the future. The exhibition assembles thirteen artists and one artist collective hailing from 14 states who represent a range of art-making approaches including painting, drawing, film and video, sculpture, animation, and community organizing. While eclectic in their materials and processes, these artists are unified in creating work that contends with our unstable social and political climate. Throughout their varied practices, they interrogate prevailing cultural narratives, established power hierarchies, and under-considered histories.

“Horizon Scanning”, the exhibition’s subtitle, is an analytical, forecasting tool used by government agencies, futurists, and policy-makers to predict future threats and opportunities. This forecasting tool is typically employed by large institutions to uphold their own authority and maintain the status quo. Assembly 2024, on the other hand, borrows the term to argue that artists and their creative practices are integral to helping us collectively envision new futures and strategies to realize them.

Assembly 2024: Horizon Scanning is the third iteration of MoCA Arlington’s biennial exhibition series. Launched in 2019, Assembly highlights current material and conceptual trends among contemporary artists.

Location: Main Level and Lower Level Galleries