PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Do/Tell is a group exhibition that explores how ideas of home and family are constructed through the act of storytelling. It features installation, film, photography, and an archival presentation by four artists, as well as a dynamic program of conversations, screenings, writing workshops, and gatherings. Organized by the students in the Spiegel-Wilks Seminar in Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the project stems from their research on ICA’s presentation of the 1994 exhibition Carrie Mae Weems. On view from April 22 through August 16, this exhibition occupies ICA’s Project Space and Ramp Space.

The exhibition space is structured around Heather Hart’s site-specific porch installation, which represents the transition between the home and the world outside where one’s sense of self can be powerfully discovered. Visitors are invited to walk on the porch or crawl underneath to discover an archive of local oral histories. These narratives are collected and organized by artist Erin Bernard in collaboration with the curators and fourth grade students from the Jubilee School in West Philadelphia. Hart and Bernard’s collaboration on a presentation of these stories, forges a relationship between the porch at ICA and the porches of West Philadelphia where the collected stories are told and retold.

On view in the Ramp Space and screened occasionally on the porch, Akosua Adoma Owusu’s short film Kwaku Ananse (2013) interweaves a Ghanaian myth with the story of a young woman who returns to the country for her father’s funeral. Owusu’s work shows how cultural and familial stories change in the process of transmission from one storyteller to the next. Similarly, Rachelle Mozman constructs complex narratives through staged photographs portraying her own family members. These images act like story boards to a telenovela that relates Latino diasporic experience. Mozman’s presentation at ICA will include her own family snapshots, which inspired some of the scenes. Taken as a whole, these works lace and loosen ties between personal stories and historical scripts that shape identity.

This exhibition is curated by 11 undergraduate students as the culmination of a collaboration between ICA and the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Through personal interaction with artists and curators, as well as extensive research, the students have come to understand the challenges and creative possibilities of the curatorial process. An illustrated publication, documenting and reflecting on the exhibition and curatorial process, is available in the gallery and similarly themed blog posts are available on the ICA website.

Student curators: Isaac Kaplan, Erich Kessel, Alyssa Laverda, Martyna Majewska, Laurissa Papillion, Kimberly Schreiber, Virginia Seymour, Samantha Sharon, Madeline Smoot, Austin Spence and Ciara Stein.

Erin Bernard (b. 1985, Marlton, NJ; lives New Jersey) received her BA in Journalism and an MA in History from Temple University, in 2008 and 2015 respectively. She is an artist, and curator, a public historian, and the creator of the Philadelphia Public History Truck: a mobile museum dedicated to preserving the story of Philadelphia and its people through engagement with its communities. Bernard is currently Adjunct Professor of History at Moore College of Art & Design. She is a former member of Little Berlin, an artist-run collective and gallery in North Philadelphia. Her work was included in “Neighborhood Workshop,” a group exhibition at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia (2014) and the Fairmount Water Works FLOW Festival in Philadelphia (2014).

Heather Hart (b. 1975, Seattle; lives New York) received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington in 1998. In 2008, she received her MFA from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Hart works primarily with large-scale interactive installations. In 2008, she participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Hart has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art PS1 in New York (2010), the Studio Museum in Harlem (2012), and the Brooklyn Museum (2014) among others. She has received grants and fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2006, 2013), the Jerome Foundation (2011), the Fine Arts Work Center (2012), and the Awesome Foundation (2013).

Rachelle Mozman (b. 1972, New York; lives in New York) received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Mozman works in both video and photography, and has had solo shows at Arteconsult in Panama City (2010), the Camera Club of New York (2013), and the Voelker Orth Museum in Flushing, New York (2014), among others. Mozman has participated in group shows at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2012), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2014), the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., (2014), and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico (2015). She was a finalist in the 86th International Competition in Photography in Philadelphia in 2012 and was an artist-in-residence at Workspace, part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, from 2013 to 2014.

Akosua Adoma Owusu (b. 1985, Alexandria, Virginia; lives in Alexandria, Virginia and Accra, Ghana) received her BA in Media Studies and Art from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Film/Video and Fine Art from the California Institute of the Arts. Her films have been screened at major international film festivals, including Cannes, BFI London Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, and the New York African Film Festival. Owusu has had solo shows at the Anacostia Arts Center in Washington, D.C. (2013), and the Anthology Film Archives in New York (2014), and has also participated in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2012) and Prospect 3 in New Orleans (2014). In 2010, she established Obibini Pictures, a production company in Ghana dedicated to producing alternative African films for international markets.