Entryways: Xenobia Bailey

Entryways: Xenobia Bailey features work by Xenobia Bailey, a Philly-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice is rooted in fiber arts, crochet, design, and Black cultural histories. For this 2025–26 edition of ICA’s collaboration with Maharam, Bailey created Cosmic-Roots, a façade installation composed of digitized crochet forms that draw on histories of Black domestic workers, including the artist’s mother, while honoring figures important to African American cultural continuity. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 118 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Runs July 12, 2025 to August 9, 2026. The installation includes references to the 1836 American Anti-Slavery Almanac, land-based knowledge held by sharecroppers and free Black families, and the musician-philosopher Sun Ra, who appears within a cosmic scene shaped by rhythm, joy, and ancestral presence. ICA describes the work as animated by Bailey’s “Funk-tional Design” language and as extending her interest in everyday objects, ceremony, and Black expressive traditions.