Temple Contemporary Projects

Black Like That: Our Lives As Living Praxis (2024)

promotional image for the Black Like That show

Temple Contemporary, the Tyler School of Art and Architecture’s center for exhibitions and public programs, opened its Fall 2024 exhibition season with the exhibition Black Like That: Our Lives As Living Praxis, a multi-site exhibition that explored the nature of the archive as a living praxis within a Black cultural context. The exhibition, anchored at Temple Contemporary and the Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery, included off-site presentations in three Philadelphia neighborhoods central to Black history and Black life in the city: North Philadelphia, West Philadelphia and Germantown.

Funded with a grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the exhibition was accompanied by a public program series that articulates the nature of contemporary Black life across multiple sites in Philadelphia and a digital platform that will serve as an interactive map and living archive.

Artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin stands in front of a colorful installation in Temple Contemporary

In 2023, Temple Contemporary presented Time Lines : First Words, a floor-to-ceiling exhibition of works by Philadelphia-based contemporary artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin, whose densely covered surfaces of calligraphic, brushed and hand-drawn patterns immerse the viewers in the logic and complexity of written language.

In Time Lines : First Words, Lin presented site-specific murals and new sculptural works that explored the convergence of representation and vibrant abstraction. The origin for these works comes from experiencing a global pandemic, public discussions of racial inequities, terrifying examples of climate change and recently becoming a parent, all of which contributed to his pre-existing feelings of anxiety and anger.

Beyond Words of the Earth (2022 - 2023)

Sculpted installation of a human rider on a horse atop a mound of earth. The installation is in front of a painted backdrop, but the white walls of the gallery are visible behind the life-size installation.

Beyond the Words of Earth was the Philadelphia debut of multi-disciplinary Toronto-based artist Rajni Perera in December 2022.

This exhibition invited viewers into the commemoration of a future where borders, imperialist capitalism and ecological collapse have birthed the survival of Travellers – a humanoid species whose multi-ancestral technologies have allowed them to recreate planetary and interplanetary relations.

The exhibition presented portraits, sculptures, and objects from Perera’s 2019 Traveller series. These works were exhibited to simulate a natural history museum, indicating an evolutionary timescale thousands of years into the future. The Travellers’ humanoid shapes still connect them to earthly pasts and honor the noble confidence and intelligence that has maintained their interconnection through self and community knowledge.

Seed Packet Project (2022)

seed packets for the Seed Packet Project

Photo courtesy of Allyson Church

Over the course of the past year, Temple Contemporary's graduate assistants collaborated with five local artists to design seed packet illustrations for five different varieties of flowers and herbs sourced from TrueLove Seeds. The five species chosen are Bee Balm, Bronze Fennel, Hopi Dye Sunflower, Feathery Plume Celosia, and Mexican Sunflower, which were picked for their beauty and ease of growing. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds grown by more than 50 small-scale farmers committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture.

Double Rainbows (2020)

rainbow artwork from the Double Rainbows show

When families in Philadelphia couldn’t go out to play, children helped bring joy to neighbors by displaying rainbows in windows from inside their homes. These rainbows were collected and displayed at the Please Touch Museum from May 6–June 27, 2021 in a pop-up exhibition as a show of citywide unity, happiness and hope.

participants in the Whistling Orchestra show

Photo courtesy of WHYY

Whistlers from across Philadelphia were brought together for the first time to perform as The Whistling Orchestra of Philadelphia. The selected Philadelphians performed a composition written specifically for whistling by the artist Emma Smith, which was inspired by music in the workplace and is composed in response to local archives and shared memories of making music at work in Philadelphia.

instruments from the Symphony for a Broken Orchestra show

Symphony for a Broken Orchestra was a city-wide effort initiated by Temple Contemporary in partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Boyer College of Music & Dance, the Curtis Institute and numerous professional/amateur musicians throughout the city. Together, these hundreds of musicians performed a unique composition in December 2017 that was written specifically for the sounds these instruments can only make in their broken state.

Pepón Osorio, reForm (detail) (2015), mixed media and video installation. Photo by Constance Mensh (for Temple Contemporary).

In 2013, two-dozen Philadelphia schools were shuttered by city authorities in an effort to close a budget deficit. In response to these closings, Temple Contemporary commissioned artist Pepón Osorio to create a new installation specifically addressing the loss of the Fairhill Elementary School in North Philadelphia, not far from Temple University.

black and white photo of an abandoned building featured in the Funeral for a Home show

Funeral for a Home serves as a preservation method for demolished homes and neighborhoods. By engaging longterm residents through reflection, education, and service, the rich history of various Philadelphia communities is celebrated through public memory and civic dialogue.

Vital Signs (2012)

Before removable vinyl billboards and neon signs, businesses hired local sign painters to dress the side of their shop or factory with large hand painted advertisements. Over time, these painted advertisements became landmarks of Philadelphia’s industrial heritage. Temple Contemporary partnered with the Mural Arts Program to restore the advertisements of still-open, family-run businesses to their former luster. The goal of this project was to rejuvenate some of the business that the advertisements represent, as well as bring pride in Philadelphia’s historic small businesses back to the city and its neighborhoods.