Tufts University Art Galleries: Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs: Exhibition Overview

In Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs, artists manuel arturo abreu, DB Amorin, Jonathan González, fields harrington, sidony o’neal, and Africanus Okokon traverse causal, alogical, and ritualistic modes of knowledge formation. Their works across sculpture, new media, sound, print, installation, and video evoke the often denigrating phrase “magical thinking,” which to skeptics suggests an impossibility or distortion in the connection between beliefs and reality.

Works in the exhibition Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs resist Western frameworks and their historically dominant visual and political regimes, and instead offer invitations to see signs, relationships, and links between the material and immaterial worlds in knowledge systems from across the Global South. These invitations range from recognizing disappearances within Nollywood film, critiquing connective and alienating technologies in the Pacific Islands, and speculating on Black cellular immortality. Such magical thinking operates as a fugitive mode of existence and resistance.

A new commission for the exhibition by Jonathan González, suite for a minor meeting, will be performed at the historic African Meeting House of the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket (MAAH) in collaboration with MAAH Chief Curator and Director of Collections Angela Tate. Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs is organized by TUAG curator Laurel V. McLaughlin with assistance from David Thacker and Meera Chauhan and builds upon the symposium Magical Thinking at MASS MoCA, co-organized by manuel arturo abreu and Laurel V. McLaughlin with Lisa Dent in November 2023, and supported by a Convening Grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed reader, featuring contributions from participating artists joined by scholars and artists Rebecca Schneider, M. NourbeSe Philip, Emilio Rojas, and S*an Henry-Smith. Exhibition and reader design is provided by Common Space, a creative studio founded by Jon Santos. Generous funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Research for this Education Guide was provided by TUAG Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin, Manager of Academic Programs Elizabeth Canter, and SMFA Library Research and Instruction Librarian Carrie Salazar. 

fields harrington, Surreptitious Spread, 2023. Aluminum Round Air Duct and hardware, 17 x 20 x 19 in. Image courtesy the artist.  Photo: Stephen Faught. 

• How is knowledge produced and disseminated around you?
• Do you participate in systems, rituals, or practices that are alogical? And if so, how does this participation create meaning for you?
• The artists in Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs, challenge existing systems that might be taken as the status quo, ranging from the scientific method to cartographic practices. How do their challenges pose interventions in these systems and provide speculative ways of rethinking them?
• Some artists in the exhibition turn to artistic strategies from Conceptual Art, an artistic movement from the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized the artistic idea over the object or materiality. How are artists in the exhibition emphasizing a concept in their works?
• Some artists in the exhibition draw upon diaspora as an experiential factor and conceptual foundation for their works. Since diaspora engages dispersion, and transition from a point to many possible other points, how do you observe visual cues about diaspora in the works?