On view is a major recent work, Songlines: Labyrinth (Versailles), 2017, one drawn from an innovative time for the artist in which, after a long hiatus, she re-engaged with abstraction. In these works, Pindell continues a metaphorical process first begun in the 1970s in which she deconstructs/reconstructs her work, cutting the canvas into complex patterns and sewing it back together, then building up the surface in elaborate stages: painting or drawing onto a sheet of paper, punching out dots from it, dropping them onto her canvas, and finally squeegeeing acrylic through the ‘stencil’ left in the paper from which she had punched the dots. Sequins, glitter, foam circles, vinyl text, powder, string, printed numbers, and even hair have become part of the artist’s labour-intensive, process-oriented approach to painting. As always, her constructed canvases are installed unstretched, held to the wall merely by the strength of a few finishing nails. The artist’s current major exhibition, Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water, is currently on view at The Shed in New York (until 11 April 2021).

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell has exhibited extensively throughout her career. The major touring survey exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen, opened at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2018, travelling to Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2018) and Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2019). Pindell’s work appeared in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern, London (2017), which toured to Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018-19), and The Broad Museum, Los Angeles (2019). In October 2020, the exhibition Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water opened at The Shed, New York, examining the violent, historical trauma of racism in America and the therapeutic power of artistic creation.