Rick Lowe

Rick Lowe’s extensive body of work in painting, drawing, and installation is paired with numerous collaborative projects, undertaken in the spirit and tradition of “social sculpture.” Working closely with individuals and communities, Lowe has identified myriad ways to exercise creativity in the context of everyday activities, harnessing it to explore concerns around equity and justice. Through such undertakings as Black Wall Street Journey (2018–), a multifaceted citywide project for which he installed an information ticker in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, and Greenwood Art Project (2018–21), where he worked with local artists and others in Alabama to raise awareness of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Lowe has developed a highly flexible practice centered on nurturing relationships and catalyzing change. Now based in Houston, Lowe was born in Russell County in rural Alabama. Among his earliest works are figurative “anti-paintings” derived from the aesthetics and functionality of protest signage. Engaging with issues such as police brutality, homelessness, poverty, and war, among others, these works were produced in collaboration with social justice groups and gatherings including community centers, protest rallies, and conferences. This work led Lowe to explore further the constructs that underlie political and social systems. Influenced by Joseph Beuys’s concept of social sculpture, he became interested in developing projects aimed at the transformation of civic structures and sites. To this end, in 1993 he cofounded Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward, a historically significant and culturally charged African American neighborhood. Conceived in collaboration with artists James Bettison (1958–1997), Bert Long, Jr. (1940–2013), Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith—as well as with neighbors and other creative thinkers, Project Row Houses transformed a small area of derelict shotgun houses into a vibrant cultural district. To this day, the project continues to unite groups and pool resources, manifesting sustainable opportunities for artists, young mothers, small businesses, and local residents. Lowe’s work in Houston inspired him to initiate and participate in other community enterprises throughout the United States and abroad, including the artist-driven redevelopment organization Watts House Project in Los Angeles (1996–2012); a collaboration with British architect David Adjaye on a project for the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park (2005); and the production of Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow , a group of six pop-up community markets, for the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (2013). Among his initiatives are the Victoria Square Project (2016–23), in the Victoria Square neighborhood of Athens, produced in collaboration with Maria Papadimitriou in the context of Documenta 14. By establishing spaces of cross-cultural dialogue, Lowe and Papadimitriou have helped make connections between immigrants, refugees, and locals possible in a community marked by xenophobic tensions following the onset of the refugee crisis in Greece. Having used dominoes to engage directly and playfully with residents of the Third Ward during the development of Project Row Houses , Lowe developed a visual language based on aerial photographs of the game that reveal its resemblance to maps of urban districts. By tracing and layering the patterns he discovers, he continues to produce paintings and drawings that, while visually abstract, represent the reconfiguration and movement of communities over time. These works offer, in Lowe’s words, “an opportunity to think about the issues of equity and urban planning in a more conceptual way.” In addition to his work in public and community spaces, Lowe has exhibited in institutions worldwide including the Phoenix Art Museum; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Arts, and in 2014 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Lowe has served as a Distinguished Visitor at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, California; Mel King Community Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Community Innovators Lab (MIT CoLab), Cambridge; and Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joined the University of Houston as a tenured professor of interdisciplinary practice in 2016.