Everything Must Be Returned

Artists Space presents Everything Must Be Returned, the first New York institutional solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Shani Strand (b. 1995). Through her work, Strand weaves culturally inscribed materials and practices to examine how the visible—objects, architectures, and social performances—operate as a metonym for the invisible: ghosts, infrastructure, and history. For Artists Space, Strand has produced an immersive installation including a newly commissioned film and sculptures that gather materials that bear the residue of historical encounter and entanglement. Occupying the entire ground floor and featuring newly commissioned works, the exhibition centers on a video titled R.I.P. He Deserves It. Its title draws on a quote by C.L.R. James on Hegel and also alludes to Jamaican poet, singer, and folklorist Louise Bennett-Coverley’s (“Miss Lou”) poem Colonization in Reverse. Comprising eleven four-line stanzas, the poem satirizes the Windrush migration—the wave of Caribbean immigrants arriving in the United Kingdom. Strand reflects on the idea of “colonization in reverse” as it relates to contemporary American imperialism. The film unfolds as a clown story and revenge fantasy, with the threat of “colonization in reverse” ever-present. Sculptures made from materials as varied as bamboo, rebar, JJJ Bricks, and ceramics depict weapons and duppies (ghosts or spirits in Jamaican Patois). These sculptures appear alongside site-specific resin pools, evoking geographies, superstitions, and lived experiences structured by violence. Guided by the question, “How might we imagine alternative moralities (or moral alienation) as methods for navigating social relations and accessing or evading violence?” Strand draws on trickster figures, including the duppy, demonic angels, and the clown. These figures trace intersections of diasporic and historical narratives at the edges of violence and in spaces of resistance. Shani Strand (b. 1995, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video and installation to consider ungovernability in a post-colonial and globalized world. She is one half of Sucking Salt, a project that archives Caribbean architecture and aesthetics to diversify architectural history and to assert the Caribbean as a site of material importance and a major intersection of various cultures and colonial histories. Recent exhibitions include the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (2026); Harkawik, LA (2024); Rachel Uffner, NY (2024); Deli Gallery, CDMX (2023); Rachel Uffner, NY (2022); and HOUSING, NY (2021). She has performed at The Broad, Los Angeles (2022) and held residencies at Automata (2022) and Interstate Projects (2018). She has been published by CARLA (2024), The Avery Review (2023) and Pin-Up Magazine (2021). She has lectured at Santa Monica Community College (2024), Wesleyan University (2024) and Harvard Graduate School of Design (2022). Strand received her BFA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.