Tau Lewis Walks Amongst Giants

Before we begin, here are a couple of fast facts; firstly, your height is continuously fluctuating over the course of 24 hours, no, caffeine is not responsible for your perpetual inability to grasp for the items out of your reach, and yes, you are doomed to shrink once you’ve passed 40. Thankfully, or rather, deliberately, Tau Lewis’ five figures that have been realised as part of ‘Spirit Level’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and named everything from ‘The Night Woman’ to ‘The Reaper’, aren’t inflicted with such prosaic cataclysms. On the contrary, they appear to rise above them instead, so much so that at almost 12 feet in height, their only concern is knocking against the ceiling of the Fotene Demoulas Gallery. 

But I digress, because if anything, these gargantuan beings seem to tower over, their observers, as much as we feel the urge to cower before them, in other words, they have the height advantage, and in ‘Spirit Level’ it’s a facet that’s well capitalised off, Particularly as geographical cycles, black emancipatory theory, and Afrofuturism are some of the conceptualisations this art show stares down. Tau Lewis has also turned to scrapped fabrics and objects and in doing so, she has inevitably lent the previously mentioned creations a boost, as well as their counterparts, who’ve similarly been dubbed with prophetical monikers such as “The Doula”, ‘Mustasis Moon’ and ‘The Handle of the Axe’. 

In numerous facets, this makes them older siblings to the artist’s younger creations, including a shoulder bag that she montaged out of kaleidoscopic, unravelled bell bottoms and shoelaces at age eight after cultivating an ability to sew. Today, she keeps one of the same pieces inside her studio and it’s clearly brought an infinite source of ingenuity given that Lewis’ first soft sculpture that she conceived for an exhibition at the 8-11 gallery in 2017 was childlike in nature and dressed in the artist’s clothes around an infrastructure of electrical wire. Its limbs and face were also realised from an amalgamation of plaster and it had also been spangled with seashells for toenails and fingernails. Over that time frame, and as part of her debut into the creative field, Lewis was also forging effigies with sculpted faces, which were staged on platforms of steel rebar and fused into concrete slabs. Similarly, they were furnished with metal chains, wire, shells, driftwood, fur and stones. 

Each creation has its own peculiarity once again with ‘Spirit Level’, although there are ubiquitous ethereal and aquatic characteristics to be found, and appreciated, by observers of this exhibition. ‘The Night Woman’ for instance, has been bedecked in a kaleidoscopic black-and-purple montage of physically rendered leather strips, Alongside them, is a manta ray that’s been portrayed as gliding down the design’s back. It’s also been christened after a novel that was authored by the Jamaican writer, Marlon James in 2009, which the artist found amongst her mother’s belongings. Similarly, ‘The Doula’ sculpture rocks a blue, deep green and brown gown that’s been assembled from suede as well as leather whilst the four-eyed ‘Mutasis Moon’ creation espouses its paranormal nature by being encompassed in PVC and Steel, the fringed sleeves, too, summon comparisons to tentacled aquatic creatures. 

Positioned as a quasi priestess that presides over this supernatural congregation is ‘The Handle of the Axe’ which has been outfitted in aurate and nods to ‘Possessing the Secret of Joy’ by Alice Walker from 1992. Its limbs have also been choreographed so that they are held aloft by an invisible force and the sculpture ultimately appears as if it beckons observers to join this pagan ritual. In this circumstance, the object of worship lies in ‘The Last Transmission’, which materialises as a realm of entities scattering in a circular manner to envelop 18 feet of space. Holding them together are numerous fabric panels which have been decorated with beads, wire and glass, the end result? A psychedelic portal that encourages observers to escape from this world and into another.