Bani Abidi

Introduction by Wassan Al-Khudhairi

Associate Curator Misa Jeffereis Introduction To Mona Chalabi  Squeeze.

Mona Chalabi: Squeeze

Teen and Adult Programs Manager Brandon Barr leads you through LEAP Middle School Initiative and New Art in the Neighborhood: New Perspectives.

LEAP Middle School Initiative and New Art in the Neighborhood: New Perspectives

Introduction to Paul Chan: Breathers

Make the River Present encourages creative engagement with the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Although St. Louis is physically bordered by these rivers—the two longest in the US which come together at the confluence a few miles north of downtown—their presence is often obscured by industrialization, urban planning, and erasure of Indigenous culture. Make the River Present invites visitors to strengthen our connections to these enduring waterways through works of art, resources, and activities. The exhibition highlights present-day and ancestral stewardship of the rivers and surrounding environments, especially focusing on Indigenous and African American perspectives. 

This interactive exhibition provides a physical space to explore contributions of artists and cultural stewards whose work respects and engages rivers—Black Heritage Water Trail, Allena Brazier, Dail Chambers, Galen Gritts (Cherokee), Native Women’s Care Circle, Monique Verdin (Houma), and other authors and contributors whose writings are included.

4. Galen Gritts: River as a Verb

Featuring artworks by an international and multigenerational group of artists, Like Water considers landscape simultaneously as a material, physical condition, and an interior emotional state. The exhibition addresses water in multiple ways—from its life-giving and destructive powers, to the Mississippi River and its tributaries, fonts (of inspiration), floods (of emotion), climate change, leakiness, and the Middle Passage. Like Water will fill the museum with sculpture, video, ceramics, drawing, textiles, collages, and paintings—each artist approaching the subject of water and fluidity in deeply individual ways. 

Introduction to "Like Water"

Haegue Yang (b. 1971, Seoul, South Korea) is known for her versatile works, ranging from room-scaled installations and performative sculptures to paper collages and staged performances. Yang dissociates quotidian objects and materials—like ventilators, venetian blinds, scent emitters, and clothing racks—from their mundane roles to recast them in multisensory experiences. Communicating without language in a primordial and visual
way through scent, sound, light, and tactility, Yang engages the disciplines of art history, literature, and political history, and touches on themes of migration, postcolonial diaspora, enforced exile, and social mobility. 

"Quasi-Heartland" marks Yang’s first solo museum presentation with a comprehensive selection of works in the midwest since 2009. For this exhibition, CAM commissioned Yang to create a new work, "Mound Vehicles," that responds to the Museum’s architecture and engages the region’s precolonial history and the Mississippi River landscape. Rounding out this presentation is a series of sculptures from Yang’s "The Intermediates" and "Airborne Paper Creatures." 

camstl.org/haegue-yang

Haegue Yang: "Mound Vehicles"

Haegue Yang: "Umbra Creatures by Rockhole"

Haegue Yang: "Airborne Paper Creatures — Triple Synecology"

Haegue Yang: Thread and chalk installations

Introduction to "Haegue Yang: Quasi-Heartland"

Teresa Baker (b. 1985, Watford City, ND) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in the Great Plains. The most comprehensive presentation of her work to date, this solo exhibition includes paintings, bronze sculpture, woven baskets, and works on paper.

Baker is celebrated for large-scale abstract paintings on shaped pieces of artificial turf. In these unique works, she brushes and sprays on acrylic paint, and applies linear designs with natural and synthetic fiber yarns. She also incorporates materials like willow, buffalo and deer hide, tree bark, corn husks, and natural and artificial sinew into her compositions. These dynamic and colorful works often resemble vast landscapes, inviting viewers to imagine prairie vistas and bird’s-eye views of grasslands. Drawing from her Native American Mandan/Hidatsa heritage, Baker’s singular vision of shape, color, and texture reveals abstraction’s narrative capacities. Through her work, Baker invigorates and expands European and American modern painting histories, offering a visionary approach to abstraction.

camstl.org/teresa-baker-somewhere-between-earth-and-sky

Teresa Baker: On Composition

Teresa Baker: Drawings

Teresa Baker: Baskets

Teresa Baker: On Abstraction

Teresa Baker: On Landscape

Teresa Baker: "Abundant"

Introduction to Teresa Baker: Somewhere Between Earth and Sky

In "Orientation" (2025), two performers respond to a series of spoken commands which appear in the video’s subtitles. Originally conceived in 2021 by Hai-Wen Lin (b. 1994, Urbana, IL), this work—the artist’s first museum commission—has been reimagined as a video projection for Street Views. Across this 61-foot wide projection on CAM’s facade, this larger-than-life pair of bodies grapples, engages, accommodates, and supports one another. Their interaction fuses the popular party game Twister with the Chinese practice of feng shui, which strives to create harmony between people and their surroundings through the strategic arrangements of objects
in space. 

In Twister, players compete to be the last person balanced on rows of red, yellow, blue, and green dots on a large plastic mat while they receive and respond to instructions like “Left hand, red; right foot, yellow.” In "Orientation," Lin has adapted the Twister format by offering cardinal directions in lieu of colors: “Right foot, south. Left hand, northeast” and reacts only to instructions offered in Mandarin, while their collaborator Charlie Thornton follows a differing set of commands in English. In Lin’s vision, hands are extended in assistance and success is mutually achieved. 

"Orientation" is on view every evening from dusk to midnight on CAM’s facade.

camstl.org/hai-wen-lin-orientation

Hai-Wen Lin: Orientation

CAM Connect is our ongoing initiative to strengthen social connection, community advocacy, and creative expression among groups who have historically faced barriers to the museum: people with disabilities, residents in North St. Louis, and older adults.

This exhibition, Access is an Invitation, features stories and works of art co-created with community partners, including quilts made by seniors at Central Baptist Church, work made in our Tornado Relief Summer Camp, and insights from the North St. Louis Creative Field Guide. Visitors are also invited to participate in an interactive Disability Justice Dreamer Space to envision accessible, creative communities and celebrate the power of meaningful partnerships.

Central Baptist Quilter Karin Fowler

Central Baptist Quilter Shelbe Bullock

Central Baptist Quilter Nellie Fogg

Central Baptist Quilter Debra Carnes

Central Baptist Quilter Vickie Franklin

Welcome from Community Access Manager, Alexis Creamer

Central Baptist Quilter Rose (part 2)

Verbal Description - Disability Justice Dreamer Space

Verbal Description - Arrival and Exhibition Introduction

Central Baptist Quilter Teresia Simmons

Verbal Description - Central Baptist Quilters

In the early 1990s, back when the Museum was known as the Forum for Contemporary Art, a few teens from the neighborhood were visiting after school and were intrigued by the art they saw in the galleries. This spark soon led to a new program, New Art in the Neighborhood (NAN), which set CAM on a path of engaging young people in the art of today. Since then, CAM has remained committed to being responsive to the needs of young people and has grown its offerings—creating countless opportunities to forge relationships with students in our immediate surroundings. Through this program and others, hundreds of young artists in St. Louis have learned about the possibilities of art and the ways that it can inform how we express ourselves.

We Find Ourselves celebrates over thirty years of young people in our city having access to the art and artists of our time. From examples of public art created by teens in the early days of NAN to the most recent artworks made through the ArtReach Partnership at Sumner and Vashon High Schools, this exhibition highlights the fruits of two of CAM’s signature art education programs. The selection of stories, photos, and works of art demonstrates the importance of staying rooted in place and community in order to provide young people with the support to push creative boundaries. This exhibition emphasizes the crucial role that art plays in youth development just as much as the evolution of the Museum finding itself in the neighborhood and city around it.

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

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