The International Center of Photography (ICP) is proud to present Instead, I spin fantasies, an exhibition by Naima Green that grapples with the concept of pregnancy through constructed self-portraits, landscapes and still-lifes—blurring the line between documentary and performance. Green probes the conventional expectations and representational tropes of motherhood, while also creating an expanded space for considering the experience of pregnancy in America.
Curated by Guest Curator Elisabeth Sherman, Instead, I spin fantasies brings together dozens of new works, including photographs printed using the historical technologies of albumen and lumen printing processes, along with a site-specific vinyl installation that utilizes the architecture of ICP’s third floor galleries.
About Naima Green
Naima Green is an artist and educator who pictures individuals and communities to document their vibrant relationships to place and pleasure. She engages with various photographic forms, sound, and experimental film. Throughout her collaborative practice, Green accesses and prioritizes the nature of intimacy, safety, and self-recognition. Often working in lush and watery environments, she presents windows into multidimensional experiences of seawater and its pathways: beauty, buoyancy, overwhelm, and submersion. Oral and written histories are critical to her process; by synthesizing archival research with outreach and conversation with current sitters, she frames picture-making as a continuum and her still images as kinetic, living histories.
Green has had solo exhibitions at Astor Weeks, Baxter St at CCNY, and Fotografiska, all NY, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU, Richmond, VA. She has exhibited in group shows at the Getty Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin, Mass MoCA, BRIC, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Houston Center for Photography, among others. She has been an artist-in-residence at Fountainhead Arts, Baxter St at CCNY, Bronx Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, MASS MoCA, Penumbra Foundation, Pocoapoco, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Barnard College Library, Decker Library at MICA, Flaten Art Museum, Fleet Library at RISD, The Getty Research Institute, Hessel Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, International Center of Photography Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Gallery of Art, Smart Museum of Art, Smith College Museum of Art, and Teachers College, Columbia University. Green holds a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MFA from ICP-Bard.
About Elisabeth Sherman
Elisabeth Sherman is the Chief Curator and Deputy Director at the Museum of the City of New York. She most recently served as Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at ICP where she curated numerous exhibitions including Sheida Soleimani: Panjereh, Yto Barrada: Part-Time Abstractionist, David Seidner: Fragments, 1977–99, and Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño. Previously, Elisabeth held curatorial roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she organized and co-organized many critically acclaimed exhibitions, includin Dawoud Bey: An American Project, Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, and Zoe Leonard: Survey, among others.
Naima Green, If I didn’t let my mind run too far ahead, I felt completely happy, 2024 ©Naima Green
Special Thanks
Exhibitions at ICP are supported, in part, by Caryl Englander, Almudena Legorreta, ICP Board of Trustees, and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
