Tau Lewis’s Monumental Sculptures Invite Audiences to Experience the Divine
Tau Lewis, installation view of “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” at 52 Walker, 2022. Courtesy of 52 Walker, New York.
Tau Lewis’s soft sculptures function as mediators between the spiritual unknown and the materially present. Monumental in size and ranging from 6 to 13 feet in height, her works are made from salvaged fabrics and inspired by the anthropomorphic masks present in Yoruban dramas. Both the masks from these stories and the ones of Lewis’s creation are spiritually activated in the presence of a physical audience, or one in another time or dimension. In this way, Lewis’s work is about destiny, existing in the never-ending drama of life and death.
The 29-year-old artist began 2022 with an impressive start: Her sculptural presentation Divine Giants Tribunal (2022) was featured in the main exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale. Lewis, who is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery and Night Gallery, closed out the year with a solo show at David Zwirner’s conceptual exhibition space 52 Walker, entitled “Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
Tau Lewis, installation view of “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” at 52 Walker, 2022. Courtesy of 52 Walker, New York.
On view through January 7, 2023, the exhibition is curated by 52 Walker director Ebony Haynes, who organized Lewis’s first New York solo shows back in 2018. Next year will bring a new level of institutional recognition for the Toronto-born, New York–based artist with a string of solo exhibitions at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Hayward Gallery in London, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
Her final presentation in 2022, at 52 Walker, is named after an old Latin proverb that translates to the “voice of the people is the voice of God.” During the press preview this past November, Lewis described the sculptures as avatars that allow for communication with angels, ancestors, or any other figure lost in time. Not unlike religious statues, Lewis’s sculptures seek to unite audiences with the immaterial, including the divine.
Tau Lewis, installation view of “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” at 52 Walker, 2022. Courtesy of 52 Walker, New York.
Lewis’s practice can be encompassed by Octavia Butler’s writings on ritual, time, and futurism. Like Butler’s protagonists in Parable of the Sower (1993) and Kindred (1979), Lewis works emphatically to relate and converse with figures beyond our time periods. In this way, her masks spiritually time-travel audiences, connecting us with those who have passed and those who have yet to come.
