‘There’s a kind of magic to her work’: Maren Hassinger’s one-of-a-kind sculptures
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- BAMPFA opened "Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing," a career-spanning retrospective of the American artist's 50-year practice, on view through November 29.
- Hassinger's work transforms everyday gestures — tying knots, filling plastic bags with breath, twisting newspaper — into large-scale sculpture, with pieces like "Untitled Rope" (industrial rope with loose macrame knots) and "Sign of the Times" (New York Times strips knotted into hanging ropes).
- BAMPFA senior curator Anthony Graham called the work "magic" and emphasized that Hassinger's repetitive, quotidian practices become sculptural when shifted in scale.
- "Love (Pyramid)" features neon pink plastic shopping bags filled with Hassinger's breath and tiny love notes pinned to a gallery wall — a piece that requires ongoing upkeep by museum staff to refill deflated bags.
- BAMPDA is staging monthly public workshops where attendees help build the "Sign of the Times" sculpture, a practice Graham said broke down hierarchical barriers on opening day when "the theater is full of everyone just talking."
- Hassinger's video works "Birthright" (2005) and "Daily Mask" foreground race and identity politics — the former traces family history through a first meeting with her uncle; the latter shows her applying grease oil stick to her face in a depiction of blackface.
- Hassinger graduated from UCLA in 1973, moved to New York in 1984, and later became director of the Reinhardt School of Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art, with wider recognition following the Hammer Museum's 2011 "Now Dig This!" show.
Why it matters: For Hassinger, a Black female artist who came up in the 1970s, this BAMPFA retrospective marks significant institutional recognition. Monthly public workshops building the "Sign of the Times" newspaper sculpture embed her practice in community care, making the exhibition itself an ongoing act of participation rather than static display.
