"Holding Spaces: Domesticated Animism"
A large work on paper by Bo Joseph entitled "Holding Spaces: Domesticated Animism," 2022, is now in the permanent collection of the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island.
This piece, entitled Holding Spaces: Domesticated Animism, 2022, will be exhibited in August at the Museum along with other recent gifts to the collection. This work is part of a series that comprised the exhibition Bo Joseph: Holding Spaces at McClain Gallery, Houston, in the Fall of 2023. The term “holding space” can be read as both an action and a place: a method of reserving and cordoning off a safe space for emotions and ideas, and a location in which things are admired, coveted, secured, or detained.
Joseph states, “since much of the imagery in my work is of cultural objects that have come into purview because of societal friction points, conflict, and outright plunder throughout history, and many of those objects are ‘held’ in public and private collections, I adapted the term as a means of opening discussion and conflict resolution around issues of cultural appropriation, authorship, artistic autonomy, and visual sovereignty.” Joseph’s work is also in the collections of the Guilin Art Museum, Guilin, China; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; and University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME. Joseph received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992.
