Skirball Cultural Center

Engage in moments of quiet reflection and meaningful exchange through the Skirball Cultural Center's first-ever outdoor exhibition, Chloë Bass: Wayfinding.

Created by artist Chloë Bass (b. 1984), Wayfinding is organized into five sections—each anchored by an open-ended question presented on a large, mirrored sculpture. Surrounding each question are several small- and medium-sized sculptures modeled after public signage and featuring archival images, repeating phrases, and supporting statements. Offering an exercise in emotional wayfinding, the exhibition invites us to examine ourselves and how we exist with others.

Wayfinding concludes its national tour at the Skirball and features a new, site-specific fifth section, as well as an audio artwork narrated by Bass and Los Angeles collaborators Kyra Jones, Mollie Eisenberg, and Jake Lawler.

Access the Audio Artwork

Chloë Bass is a multi-form conceptual artist working in performance, situation, conversation, publication, and installation. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Queens College, CUNY, where she co-runs Social Practice Queens. Her work uses daily life as a site of deep research to address scales of intimacy: where patterns hold and break as group sizes expand.

Bass’s projects have appeared nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Brooklyn Public Library, Kohler Arts Center, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, BAK basis voor actuele kunst, the Knockdown Center, the Kitchen, the Brooklyn Museum, MASS MoCA, CUE Art Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, and elsewhere. Her monograph The Books of Everyday Instruction was published in 2018. She has also published a chapbook (an intimate book of poetry, prose, and images) titled #sky #nofilter in 2020.

First curated by Legacy Russell and presented by the Studio Museum in Harlem in partnership with St. Nicholas Park, Harlem, and NYC Parks, Chloë Bass: Wayfinding then traveled to St. Louis for an exhibition organized by Kristin Fleischmann Brewer and Joshua Peder Stulen at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Cate Thurston curates its final stop at the Skirball Cultural Center.

The Skirball is working in partnership with the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, to present concurrent projects by Chloë Bass, both of which debut in the fall of 2022.

Chloë Bass: Wayfinding and its related educational programs at the Skirball Cultural Center are made possible by generous support from the following donors:

Kafi and Bob Blumenfield
Stephanie and Harold Bronson