Suné Woods

Artist’s Statement

Water is the element that I have been moving through and learning from in order to understand interspecies relationships, ancestral realms, and heal emotional ecosystems.   Potable water is becoming more precious and droughts such as the one that we are currently experiencing in California are an important reminder of what is at stake in our evolution on this planet.

Aragonite Stars is my five channel experimental video installation with audio accompaniment by the musician Meshell Ndegeocello, contemplating the possibilities of healing through bodies of water such as oceans, rivers, hot springs, and in vessels we call human. Healing psychic, spiritual, physical, and emotional wounds through earth based practices, ocean therapies, dance, breathing modalities, and plant medicines is what I live and believe.

Through my work I advocate for an existence where there is power in the sensual, emotions are intelligence, and transformation is through a reconnection to the nature within ourselves.

My desire is for power to be shifted away from ideologies of individualism that is perpetuated through capitalism to support the well being of the most vulnerable in our communities.

Website: www.instagram.com/constellation.matters

Exhibition Record
2022 Aragonite Stars, BRIC, Brooklyn, New York
2021 Eco-Urgency: Now or Never Part One, Wave Hill & Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York
Hearing Aids, curated by Alison O’Daniel, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts
Presence Requested, curated by Cassie Riger, Irenic Projects, Pasadena
chœr, parle à travers la vie chorus/ chorus, talk through life, curated by Ronald Rose Antoinette, Musée D’Art, Contemporain, De Montréal, Montréal
The Forest and The Sea, organized by Emma Gray, Five Car Garage, Los Angeles
As Far As You Can, Tell the Truth, organized by Petra Bibeau, Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco
2020 Chapter &  Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin, online
Ghosts From the Recent Past, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Come Undone: Suné Woods and Ranu Mukherjee, curated by Marc Mayer, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
2019 L.A. Blacksmith, curated by Jill Moniz, CAAM, Los Angeles
2018 Indoor/Outdoor curated by Glen Helfand and Kim Nguyen, Art Toronto, Toronto
This Body is Alive (solo exhibition) Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco
Made in L..A. 2018 curated by Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Manifesto: A Moderate Proposal curated by Ciara Ennis & Jennifer Vanderpool, Nichols Gallery, Pitzer College, Claremont
Biomythography: Reflexive Remix curated by Jessica Wimbley & Chris Harris Art Gallery, University of La Verne, Claremont
2017 When a Heart Scatter, Scatter, Scatter (solo exhibition) curated by DJ Hellerman The Everson Museum, Syracuse
To Sleep With Terra (solo exhibition) Light Work’s Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, Syracuse
A Feeling Like Chaos, Urban Video Project, Syracuse
Ours Is A City Of Writers, curated by Simon Leung, Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, Los Angeles
The Collectivists, The Brand Library, Los Angeles
2016 Let It Be Known, curated by Erin Christovale, REDCAT, Los Angeles
This Wicked Tongue, curated by Cindy Rehm, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles
Black Radical Imagination, curated by Erin Christovale and Amir George, MoMa PS1
A Feeling Like Chaos, screening, July 21, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
Baum Award Exhibition, SF Camerawork, San Francisco
2015 To Sleep With Terra, (solo exhibition) Papillion, Los Angeles
Nadar, (solo exhibition) Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles
2014 Dark Desires: The Erotic Lives of Black Female Subjects, curated by crystal am nelson, Center of Sex & Culture, San Francisco
Video Art Residency, Papillion, Los Angeles
2013 The Familiar Unfamiliar, curated by MHM, Casa Agave, Wonder Valley
Wunderkammer: Minatures & Curiousities, Koplin Del Rio, Los Angeles
2012 Underexposed, curated by Mark S. Greenfield, Center for the Arts Eagle Rock, Los Angeles
Movin’ On Up: Black Art Now, curated by Julian Bermudez, KPCC, Los Angeles
Self-Possessed: Examining Identity in the 21^st Century, Koplin Del Rio, Los Angeles
Between Truth and Fiction: Pictorial Narratives, Koplin Del Rio, Los Angeles
Visions from the New California Exhibition, curated by Mark S. Greenfield, 18^th
Street Art Center, Santa Monica
Artist Tower of Protest, curated by Cesar Garcia, Los Angeles
2011 CREAM, curated by Kathryn Weller Renfrow, The Performance Art Institute, San Francisco
770 Show, curated by Arden Sherman, Adobe Books, San Francisco
2010 Hangin’ Together, curated by Kerry James Marshall, Koplin Del Rio, Culver City
Everyday Mystics, curated by Kim Anno, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco
Hearsay of the Sun, Queens Nails Projects, San Francisco
MFA Thesis Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
bountiful darkness, (solo exhibition) California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
2009 Immediate Future: The 2009 Murphy and Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco

Performances
The Sound Eye Sea, Five Car Garage, Los Angeles (2021)
You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018)
(with Fred Moten and James Gordon Williams)
You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Light Work, Syracuse (2017)
(with Fred Moten and James Gordon Williams)

Residencies
Irish Museum of Modern Art, (upcoming 2022)
Penumbra Foundation, 2017
Light Work, 2016
Center for Photography at Woodstock, 2015
Vermont Studio Center, 2014
Headlands Center for the Arts, 2012

Awards
Fellowship of Visual Arts, California Community Foundation, 2022
Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Trailblazer, Los Angeles, 2020
Hundred Heroines, 2020
Artadia Award Los Angeles, 2020
Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer, 2016
John Gutmann Photography Fellowship Award, 2015
Visions from the New California, 2012
Murphy & Cadagon Fellowship, 2009

Commissions
Suite Number Seven, Meshell Ndgeocello’s Chapter & Verse: Gospel of James Baldwin, 2020

Bibliography
Benzine, Vittoria, Big Sur in Brooklyn: Video Installation ‘Aragonite Stars’ Brings Underwater Zen To Bric, Brooklyn Magazine, 16 March 2022
Blint, Rich, An act of survival and a strategy to heal, A-Line Journal, 29 August 2021
Haiqi Zhou, Suné Woods: Suite Number Seven is a Portal, Graphite Journal, 5 February 2021
Tamara Suarez Porras, Fold, Staple, Embrace: The Body Alive in the Archive, Art Practical, 16 October 2018
Glen Helfand, Suné Woods: This Body is Alive at Casemore Kirkeby, Photograph, 2018
Jasmine Ashoori, The Duende of Artist of Suné Woods, Flaunt, October 2016
Britt Harrison & B. Justine Jaime, Suné Woods, Future Tongue, February 2016
Kio Griffith. Fresh Faces in Art: Artists You Should Know, Fabrik, Issue 30, January 2016
Christopher Knight, Thwarted Ambition and a state of limbo in work by Suné Woods at Papillion Gallery. 23 October 201
Kris Timkin. The New Explorers: Making Meaning in the 21^st Century American Landscape, 2015
Anna Martine Whitehead. A Considered Space: The Work of Suné Woods, Art Practical. 30 January 2014
crystal am nelson.  African American Women and Photography, Oxford African American Studies Center. 31 July 2013
Leah Ollman. Art Review: Hangin’ Together at Koplin Del Rio. LA Times. 6 August 2010
Sharon Mizota. Hangin’ Together.  ARTnews. October 2010

Artist Talks
Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2022
The Hammer Museum, 2020
University of Vermont, 2018
Art+Practice, 2017
Penumbra Foundation, 2016
California College of the Arts, 2016
Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2016
California Institute of the Arts, 2015
California College of the Arts, 2012 

Education
MFA California College of the Arts, San Francisco, 2010