Over the weekend, I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) for the first time. Fun fact: On Indigenous People’s Day, all tickets to the ICA are free! You can also get free tickets by signing up for a museum pass with a Boston Public Library card. All the exhibits were located on the fourth floor, so it was a simple loop of art to navigate through.
My favorite exhibit was “The Visitors” by Radnor Kjartansson. He exemplified the themes of love and loss through various videos taken around an embellished 43-bedroom house in upstate New York. Each video captures a different room with a different person playing a specific instrument– there was a man playing the guitar in a bathtub, a woman playing the accordion in a drawing room. The exhibit itself is a large dark room with various projectors showing each video in a different section of the room. Although each person is in a separate room and a separate video, they come together to play a song. I was lucky enough to enter the exhibit right before their performance started. The emotion and intensity of their voices filled the entire room with a folksy style. This Mumford and Sons-esque song gradually escalated in intensity, eventually resulting in screaming. The exhibit was reminiscent of the sentiment “alone together” because it consists of people physically separated while playing this song in unison. One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was watching families sit on the floor to enjoy the performance. “The Visitors” was certainly the highlight of my trip to the ICA. I definitely recommend visiting this museum, especially if you can get it in for free!
