Judith Barry

Judith Barry, untitled: (Global Displacement: nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide are displaced from their homes. Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/05/key-facts-about-the-worlds-refugees/), 2018.

For her installation on the Museum façade, American-born artist Judith Barry has chosen to work with some of the hundreds of drone images depicting refugees fleeing their homes and seeking a new life elsewhere. By orienting one of these boats vertically and populating it with the upward turned faces taken from these photographs, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Façade can act as a beacon: the faces forming a procession, illuminating the sky.

This work is presented as part of a citywide partnership of arts and educational institutions recognizing the role greater Boston has played in the history and development of technology. The Institute of Contemporary Art/ Boston has initiated this partnership to link concurrent exhibitions and programs related to the themes of the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, on view at the ICA from February 7 to May 20.

Judith Barry, an artist and writer, works across multiple mediums. She utilizes a research-based methodology to explore wide range of topics. Both the form and the content of her work evolve as the research proceeds. She often makes use of installation, in various forms, as a way to combine many of her disparate interests. These immersive environments are based on experiments incorporating architecture, sculpture, performance, theatre, film/video/new media, graphics, and interactivity.

Barry’s art encompasses film, performance, installation, sculpture, architecture, photography, and new media, and has been featured internationally at venues such as the Berlin Biennale, Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, and Documenta.  She received the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts in 2000, was honored with “Best Pavilion” at the Cairo Biennale in 2001, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. Barry has held full-time teaching positions at numerous institutions, including Merz Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany, and has been until recently Professor/Director of the MFA Visual Arts Program at LUCAD in Cambridge, Mass. Currently, Barry is Professor/Director in the ACT Program at MIT, Cambridge, MA.