Exhibition: Jamilah Sabur, Memory Palace

We are pleased to announce our forthcoming exhibition of new work by Miami-based multi-discipline artist Jamilah Sabur. The exhibition, entitled Memory Palace, will include work from a new series, entitled “Mnemonic alphabet,” as well as a new sculptural installation. The artist will give a walkthrough of the exhibition at 5pm, followed by an opening reception until 8pm in conjunction with First Friday Art Walk.

Over the past several years, Sabur has developed her research-based practice, working across disciplines, including video, performance, sculpture, and installation. Sabur’s influences are far reaching, from language and memory, to geology and mapping, and she employs whatever materials best convey her conceptual framework. The works are always a negotiation of space, the artist’s endeavor at connecting the personal to the universal, and further, a consideration of the present moment through the “lens of history.”

Many of the ideas and themes in Jamilah’s newest body of work have developed over the past two years as a result of the historical research she undertook while in St. Augustine, more specifically her interest in the Franciscan texts that were translated to the Timucua language, an extinct language of the indigenous tribe of St. Augustine, for the purposes of converting the indigenous population to Catholicism. The significance of language is most present in the Mnemonic alphabet series, five of which new works will be included in Memory Palace, which include words in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Timucua. About the piece “Mnemonic alphabet (S/Saudade),” as included in Oolite Arts’ current exhibition It will never become quite familiar to you, the curator states that Sabur “underscores the limits of language when trying to convey concepts across places and people’s” through her choice of words that have no direct translation to English. The artist frames these words with imagery that reference her family history, as well as her connection to Miami and the place where she lives, in an attempt to collapse these barriers to understanding.

Jamilah Sabur (b. Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, FL. She received her MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2014 and her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Selected recent exhibitions include Hammer Projects: Jamilah Sabur, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Ibine Ela Acu/Water Sun Moon, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL; Augmented Sunrise Beneath the Skin, gr_und project space, Berlin; Seances for the Living, SBC galerie d’art Contemporain, Montreal; Deconstruction: A reordering of life, politics, and art, Frost Art Museum, Miami; Between a view and a milestone, ArtCenter/South Florida; SCORCHED EARTH, Current Projects, Miami; The World’s Game: Futbol and Contemporary Art, Pérez Art Museum, Miami. She was an artist in residence at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum in 2017 and has given lectures at Design Miami; Coral Gables Museum, Florida; Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto and Flagler College, St. Augustine. Sabur is currently an artist in residence Oolite Arts in Miami.