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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Artist Residency
    • Bookshelf Residency
    • Digital Projects
    • Public Programs
    • Schools & Community
    • Special Projects
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
    • Annual Report
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Membership
    • Patron Groups
    • Institutional Support
    • Artist Edition Series
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
  • Donate
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Back To Exhibitions
Will Rawls: [siccer] April 05 ➽ August 31
3 Upcoming Events
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Will Rawls: [siccer] April 05 ➽ August 31
3 Upcoming Events

Will Rawls: [siccer]

Exhibitions
[siccer] is an interdisciplinary project and immersive installation by artist and choreographer Will Rawls (b. 1978, Boston, MA), who is based between Los Angeles and New York. Marking Rawls’ most significant institutional presentation to date, [siccer] uses dance, stop-motion animation, and sound to investigate the role of media in documenting, exploiting, and erasing the Black body. 
Adopting the techniques and technologies associated with the cinema and the stage, Rawls’ work challenges divisions between the living, the rehearsed, and the performed. Produced with stop-motion animation, [siccer] features an all-Black cast of performers in various states of motion and capture. At once fragmented and continuous, the performers’ gestures glitch in and out of focus across a scaffolding of chroma green frames reminiscent of the green screens commonly associated with film production. While the green screen is traditionally meant to disappear, in [siccer], the screen becomes the setting for both performer and visitor. In this refusal to remain fixed, Rawls recontextualizes how racialized subjects navigate forced states of invisibility. And, as Kermit the Frog reminds us, “it’s not easy being green.” 
Adopting the techniques and technologies associated with the cinema and the stage, Rawls’ work challenges divisions between the living, the rehearsed, and the performed. Produced with stop-motion animation, [siccer] features an all-Black cast of performers in various states of motion and capture. At once fragmented and continuous, the performers’ gestures glitch in and out of focus across a scaffolding of chroma green frames reminiscent of the green screens commonly associated with film production. While the green screen is traditionally meant to disappear, in [siccer], the screen becomes the setting for both performer and visitor. In this refusal to remain fixed, Rawls recontextualizes how racialized subjects navigate forced states of invisibility. And, as Kermit the Frog reminds us, “it’s not easy being green.” 
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The project’s title is inspired by the Latin adverb sic, often used within brackets to indicate incorrect spelling within a citation. Through this titular reference, [siccer] illuminates the ways in which Black subjectivity resists standard Western forms of “correction,” suggesting instead a way of being that is both iterative and endlessly becoming. In an image-saturated world wherein our technologies and identities are inextricably intertwined, [siccer] points to the trap of the ever-present camera—echoed in the repeated snaps that resound from the installation’s soundscape—and the intensive labor of becoming an image. This exhaustion of being held in a constant state of fugitivity is further emphasized by the cattails scattered throughout the gallery, which allude to the environment of the swamp. Neither land nor water, but a territory that exists between both landscapes, the swamp represents an ecological site of transformation. For Black and Indigenous people in particul …

The project’s title is inspired by the Latin adverb sic, often used within brackets to indicate incorrect spelling within a citation. Through this titular reference, [siccer] illuminates the ways in which Black subjectivity resists standard Western forms of “correction,” suggesting instead a way of being that is both iterative and endlessly becoming. In an image-saturated world wherein our technologies and identities are inextricably intertwined, [siccer] points to the trap of the ever-present camera—echoed in the repeated snaps that resound from the installation’s soundscape—and the intensive labor of becoming an image. This exhaustion of being held in a constant state of fugitivity is further emphasized by the cattails scattered throughout the gallery, which allude to the environment of the swamp. Neither land nor water, but a territory that exists between both landscapes, the swamp represents an ecological site of transformation. For Black and Indigenous people in particular, the swamp has historically served as a space of refuge, liberation, and self-reclamation.

Embracing the liminality of the swamp, Rawls—together with performers Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste—explores the limits and possibilities of gesture and language to speculate on collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.

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Installation view, Will Rawls: [siccer], Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, April 5–August 31, 2025. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
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April 10, 2025, 8:30 PM - 10 PM
April 11, 2025, 8:30 PM - 10 PM
April 12, 2025, 8:30 PM - 10 PM
Will Rawls: [siccer]
Performance
Siccer 394

April 05, 2025, 3 PM - 7 PM
Open House at ICA LA
Openings
All Ages
Exhibitions
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May 01, 2025, 7 PM - 8:30 PM
Listening Session with Will Rawls
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May 14, 2025, 7 PM - 8:30 PM
A Closer Look: Will Rawls’ [siccer] and its iterations
Talks & Panels
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June 04, 2025, 7 PM - 8:30 PM
POV Tour: Olivia Mole on Will Rawls: [siccer]
Exhibition Programs
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June 25, 2025, 7 PM - 8:30 PM
Action Interrupted, on Stop-Motion Animation:
Will Rawls and Lyndon Barrois, Sr
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Exhibition Guide (English)
Exhibition Guide (Spanish)
April 07, 2025
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March 01, 2025
Will Rawls’ [siccer] Explores Black Identity Through Movement
May 07, 2025
Will Rawls “[siccer]” at ICA, Los Angeles

Will Rawls: [siccer] is organized by Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator, with Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle, Curatorial Associate.

Lead funding forWill Rawls: [siccer] is provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance, Karen Hillenburg, Sarah and Joel McHale, Dori and Charles Mostov, and Anonymous. Additional support is provided by Tim Disney and John Morace & Tom Kennedy.

ICA LA is supported by the Curator’s Council and Fieldwork Council.

The [siccer] live performances are presented by REDCAT and ICA LA. [siccer] was originally commissioned by The Kitchen in partnership with co-commissioners, The Momentary, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, On the Boards, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

For their production support, artist would also like to thank: Kemi Adeyemi, Dana Doughty, Rebecca Fitton, Jimmy Garver, Maggie Heath, Sasha Okshteyn, Saša Kovačević, Lauryn Siegel, Indigo Sparks and David Szlasa.

[siccer] was made possible, in part, by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is a Creative Capital Project. [siccer] is also a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). [siccer] also received substantial developmental support from THINKLARGE.US, a family run nonprofit created by Don Quinn Kelley and Sandra L. Burton to aid in the creation of new work.

[siccer] was developed and supported, in part, by residencies at The Momentary and Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, with additional support by On the Boards and The Kitchen; a creative residency at Petronio Residency Center, a program of the Stephen Petronio Company; with financial, administrative and residency support from Dance in Process at Gibney with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Movement Research; the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles and The Hammer Museum Residency; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University; with production support and residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Williams College and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The forthcoming [siccer] album was made possible with support from the Barbara Streisand Center for the Study of Women at UCLA.

Will Rawls is an artist and choreographer whose multidisciplinary practice explores the ambiguities of Blackness—its visibility and erasure, its performance and abstraction—to reframe the relationship between language and the body. In 2016, he co-curated Lost and Found, a six-week program of performances and artist projects at Danspace Project focused on the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. Based in Los Angeles, he currently teaches in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles and lectures widely in academic and community contexts. In addition, his work has been exhibited across the U.S., including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.
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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
468 Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes 2025-10-11 2026-03-01 1:47pm Apr 14, 2025 Page
Active Published
336 Will Rawls: [siccer] 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
Icala 2025 04 09 034
9:36am May 08, 2025 Page
Active Published
369 Jackie Castillo: Through the Descent, Like the Return 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
Icala 2025 04 09 200
12:46pm Apr 25, 2025 Page
Active Published
501 J&L Books: Reading Room 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
J+l books courtesy jeff mclane installation view 01
5:27pm May 09, 2025 Page
Active Published
402 An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and Its Open Source Uses 2024-12-04 2025-03-02
Genderfail bookshelf residency image 1
1:18pm Apr 23, 2025 Page
Active Published
303 Agency of Assets x SUAY
Fix the Future
2024-10-05 2024-11-17
Icala 2024 10 11 117
3:51pm Oct 18, 2024 Page
Active Published
137 Scientia Sexualis 2024-10-05 2025-03-02
Icala 2024 10 29 001
1:52pm Apr 02, 2025 Page
Active Published
270 Demian DinéYazhi' 2024-10-05 2025-08-24
Poz 1492 (2019)
3:08pm Oct 16, 2024 Page
Active Pageless
435 Reading is Transcendental 2024-10-05 2026-03-01 3:19pm Mar 04, 2025 Page
Active Published
237 Kathryn Andrews 2024-09-07 2024-11-17
K andrews dsf9640 corrected hires
1:15pm Oct 28, 2024 Page
Active Published
204 Returning 2024-06-05 2024-07-28
Returning_Exhibition Image__01.JPG
1:51pm Mar 03, 2025 Page
Active Published
171 Ooga Boogie, cha cha cha! 2024-04-10 2024-06-02
Ooga Boogie, cha cha cha!_Exhibition Image_1.JPG
4:44pm Jul 03, 2024 Page
Active Published
138 Kima Ten Years 2024-02-10 2024-04-07
Ten years exhibition image 1
4:04pm Jul 03, 2024 Page
Active Published
133 Scratching at the Moon 2024-02-10 2024-07-28
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4:36pm Dec 04, 2024 Page
Active Published
136 Foreign Investments (Bottarga in Costa Mesa) 2024-02-10 2024-07-28
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5:11pm Jul 30, 2024 Page
Active Published
132 Barbara T. Smith: Proof 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Installation view, _Barbara T. Smith: Proof_, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 7, 2023–January 14, 2024. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA.
9:33am Mar 05, 2025 Page
Active Published
134 Infinite Rehearsal with Chris Emile and No)one. Art House 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Icala(10 10) 055
3:47pm Nov 22, 2023 Page
Active Published
135 Data (beta): the labor of looking 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
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2:51pm Aug 12, 2024 Page
Active Published
129 Trương Công Tùng 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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1:34pm Sep 13, 2023 Page
Active Published
130 Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Icala 2023 06 12 042
2:40pm Aug 17, 2023 Page
Active Published
131 Alberta Whittle: between a whisper and a cry 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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10:44am Jul 29, 2023 Page
Active Published
126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 2023 02 14 039
10:40am May 09, 2023 Page
Active Published
127 Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
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1:14pm May 04, 2023 Page
Active Published
128 Christine Sun Kim: Bounce Back 2023-02-11 2024-01-14
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11:42am Feb 19, 2025 Page
Active Published
91 Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
Image of exhibition introduction text, Rebecca Morris painting hands in the background.
1:10pm Apr 01, 2024 Page
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