55 Walker is pleased to announce The wind keeps time, a solo exhibition of works by Paula Wilson (b.1975, Chicago).

Paula Wilson is a multimedia artist known for creating works that use collage as a unifying approach, in both material and content. Incorporating print, textile, painting, and video, Wilson moves across scales, creating both monumental free-formed figurative pieces, reaching up to 30 feet high, and intimately-sized mosaiced assemblages. Drawing deeply from her own biography, including her 2007 relocation from Brooklyn to Carrizozo, New Mexico, a town of less than 1,000 residents, her holistic practice in the high-desert plains extends beyond traditional artworks. It encompasses functional objects such as her own clothing which she prints and sews, as well as rugs made from painted and printed fabric affixed to wood slats.

Wilson’s seamless integration of artistic practice with daily life showcases her continual process of revision, recycling, and recombination. The Wind Keeps Time highlights this remaking, bringing artworks previously installed in the living spaces of her home and studio, into the gallery. These include Wilson’s rug pieces that bare the traces of their use, and when shown upright, take on a sculptural presence. The exhibition also features paintings that play with the window as a pictorial convention, and a new video piece shot exclusively in Carrizozo, serving as a portal into the artist’s life as it melds inextricably with her art.

Paula Wilson’s solo exhibition Towards the sky’s back door is currently on view at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles through August 18, 2024. This exhibition, which traveled from The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, was curated by Rebecca McNamara in collaboration with the artist. Wilson’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, and is included in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Albuquerque Museum, the New York Public Library, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Princeton University Art Museum, among others. Born in Chicago, Wilson earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Wilson lives and works in Carrizozo, New Mexico, where she co-founded the artist-run organizations Carrizozo Artists-in-Residency, and MoMAZoZo.