Senga Nengudi @ Dia Beacon

On February 16th, 2024, I took a day trip to Beacon, NY. Part of my trip included a visit to "Dia Beacon", an art museum. Check out more from the museum here.

My last stop before heading out for the day was looking at some of Senga Nengudi's works. Nengudi has done many pieces consisting of what looks to be colored water in plastic. In "Water Composition (yellow/green)" (or green/yellow, Dia has this under multiple names), I'm reminded of those frozen ice pops that were a dollar a dozen that I used to have as a kid over the summer. It's a weird sense of nostalgia, but Nengudi is able to invoke those feelings throughout all of her pieces. Many of them in the "Water Composition" series remind me of things like lilypads, and kites.

"Sandmining B" also invokes a sense of nostalgia for me. It's like a playground that's been weathered away over time and forgotten. with the bright colors and the little metal pipes, you definitely get a sense that this was once a lovely little place for a kid to just run around. Despite that, it's been left to sit and battle the elements over the years. With the color fading from the once brightly painted pieces of metal, now being buried by the sand. It's an odd piece to see in the museum. There's even another piece in this room that has sand scattered around the walls as well. The pipe against the wall feels like the color has faded into the wall itself, leaving a mangled mess behind. Apparently this piece also has an audio component to it as well, but despite being there when it was supposed to play, I didn't get to hear it.

"Untitled" is a weird one. It's some red pigment on the wall, covered in string. At first I thought it was blood, or maybe some kind of array of Petri dishes. It was unsettling at first, but then you're left just wondering.

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Senga Nengudi's Exhibition @ Dia
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