Spotlight: Sarah Cain

SEPTEMBER 13-OCTOBER 26, 2024

The Spotlight series includes a new or never-before-exhibited artwork paired with a commissioned piece of writing, creating focused and thoughtful conversations between the visual arts and authors, critics, poets, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Sarah Cain’s Path of Totality, 2024. A text by curator and writer Jamillah James accompanies the presentation.

About:

Sarah Cain (b. 1979, Albany, New York) is an artist living and work in Los Angeles, CA. Cain earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA in 2001. She earned her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, in 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Day after day on this beautiful stage,  Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2023); hand in hand, Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (2022); My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2021), and In Nature, Momentary, Bentonville, AR; among others. Cain attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, in 2006. Her work forms part of numerous public collections, including National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Stanford Health Center, Palo Alto, CA; among others. 

Jamillah James is Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She was co-curator (with Margot Norton) of Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York. From 2016-2022, James was Curator (then Senior Curator) at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), where she curated solo and group exhibitions and organized the local presentations of several touring exhibitions, with an emphasis on women and BIPOC artists. Previously, she was Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, organizing exhibitions at the museum and Art + Practice, Leimert Park; and held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Queens Museum, New York, in addition to producing exhibitions and programs at various alternative and artist-run spaces throughout the US and Canada. James is the recipient of the Noah Davis Prize from the Underground Museum, Los Angeles and Chanel Culture Fund (2021), a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2021), and a Curatorial Fellowship from the VIA Art Foundation (2018). She has contributed to Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art; numerous institutional exhibition catalogues; and regularly lectures on contemporary art, curating, and professional development for emerging artists.

#SarahCain