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Image of Janiva Ellis: Fear Corroded Ape

Janiva Ellis: Fear Corroded Ape

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 12pm to 5pm

+ 8 dates

  • Wednesday, February 12, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Thursday, February 13, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Friday, February 14, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Saturday, February 15, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Sunday, February 16, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Tuesday, February 18, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Wednesday, February 19, 2025 12pm to 5pm
  • Thursday, February 20, 2025 12pm to 5pm
Image of Janiva Ellis: Fear Corroded Ape

Event Dates

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 12pm to 5pm

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Level 3 Gallery View map

24 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA 02138

https://carpenter.center/exhibitions/janiva-ellis
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January 31–April 6, 2025   

In preparing for her exhibition at the Carpenter Center, Janiva Ellis reengaged with paintings that had remained unfinishable in her studio for years, floating in and out of her consciousness. The artist has called these “dust bunny ideas”—hard-to-resolve paintings that settle into corners of her studio to be continuously reworked, with long breaks in between. As a result, much has changed in the world during their long gestation. Fear Corroded Ape asks what it means to assemble a group of “unresolvable” images.  

Ellis reconfigures a broad array of imagery from art historical portraiture and landscape conventions, animation, and popular culture into dissonant scenes. By turns explicit and obscuring, her paintings narrativize white existentialist mythology alongside social degradations and the brutal, nuanced forces that enable their denial. Employing a broad range of techniques and motifs, Ellis operates beyond the mere exposure of these forces, manipulating their sentimental resonances to reveal the desires inherent in cultural canonization.  

Event Details