January 18 – May 4, 2025
Curated by Marina Chao
This exhibition, titled Recess, features the work of 2024 Saltzman Prize winner Keisha Scarville (American, born 1975). Scarville makes photographs that consider her personal experience of in-betweenness, exploring notions of diaspora, transformation, belonging, and loss. In her photographs, she creates spaces, stages, and still lives, often using clothing and textiles belonging to her late mother. When Scarville invokes her mother’s presence in her works, she creates alternate, liminal places that engage both memory and the possibilities of abstraction.
In Recess, Scarville refers both to the hollow space beneath a flat plane and to any temporary pause or suspension. In this way, Scarville continues her exploration of thresholds. Neither here nor there, thresholds are spaces of becoming; they mark moments of “passing through,” suspended instants that are full of potential and prospects of the unknown. For Scarville, shadows function as these types of spaces. They are not only dark shapes that lack light and clarity, but also deep, productive zones where alternative temporalities and in-between narratives reside. In her photographs and installations, Scarville activates the shadow as a form in ways that require closer looking, deeper feeling, and the active negotiation of being.
Recess is accompanied by a limited edition artist’s book by Keisha Scarville (published by CPW in collaboration with 1080PRESS).
25 Dederick Street, Kingston, NY 12401
On view Thursday-Sunday, 11–5 PM
Opening reception: Saturday, January 18, 2025, 5-8 PM
Free admission.
BIOGRAPHY
Keisha Scarville (b. 1975) explores diaspora, loss, and the unfixing of identity and body in her work. Born in Brooklyn, New York to Guyanese immigrant parents, Scarville identifies with an innate sense of in-betweenness—a feeling of displacement that weaves throughout her projects. In her series Mama’s Clothes, begun in 2015, clothing and patterned textiles belonging to Scarville’s late mother both conjure her presence and create a visual, photographic space in which body, memory, and abstraction coexist. Scarville was a 2003 CPW Artist-in-Residence. Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, ICA Philadelphia, and the Brooklyn Museum, among other institutions, and is represented in permanent collections including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Her first monograph, lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound (MACK, 2023), was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Award for First PhotoBook.
About the Saltzman Prize
Keisha Scarville is the inaugural recipient of the Saltzman Prize. Awarded annually by the Saltzman Family Foundation, the Prize was founded and sponsored by CPW Trustee Lisa Saltzman. The prize pays tribute to Ralph and Muriel Saltzman, passionate collectors, generous art patrons, and active art philanthropists. Selected through an international nomination and jurying process, the Saltzman Prize supports CPW’s commitment to assisting developing artists through training, mentorship, and exhibitions.
