Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images marks the first major museum survey to explore the Jamaica-born artist and educator’s prolific 50-year career. Opening at ICA Philadelphia on July 12, where it will remain on view through December 7, the show is co-organized with the Studio Museum in Harlem, where it will travel in the spring of 2027. This comprehensive retrospective offers an expansive reexamination of Pusey’s impact on abstract art and beyond.
An important figure in geometric abstraction, Mavis Pusey (1928–2019) created rich paintings and works on paper that reflect her wide-ranging engagement with fashion, printmaking, and the urban environment of the cities in which she lived. Yet despite her international presence in the art world, her work has largely remained overlooked. Mobile Images is the culmination of over a decade of research and collaboration, offering new insights into the artist’s life and work.
Much of her art addresses themes deeply connected to contemporary life, including her Broken Construction series (1960s-1990s), which explores her powerful use of destruction and renewal as metaphors for societal change. These works, along with others, are further contextualized through the inclusion of photographs, personal notes, and archival materials that provide invaluable insights into her practice and the historical context surrounding her boundary-pushing work. This exhibition dives into Pusey’s significant contributions to abstract art, deepening our understanding of her lasting impact on contemporary artistic discourse.
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