SWEET PASS SCULPTURE PARK

Anika Todd: Dark Study
Courtney Stephens: Terra Femme

April 27 – July 13, 2024

Anika Todd’s Site-Responsive Sculpture in the Park and Courtney Stephens’ Film to be Featured in SP2, Accompanied by Live Outdoor Performance DALLAS, April 1, 2024—Sweet Pass Sculpture Park announces the opening of an exhibition of a new commissioned sculpture titled Dark Study by Anika Todd alongside Terra Femme, a widely praised film by Courtney Stephens. This pairing will run from April 27 through July 13, 2024, with an opening reception featuring a live narration by Stephens on Saturday, April 27, with doors opening at 7PM.

Anika Todd’s Dark Study installation draws inspiration from the historic moon towers of Austin, Texas. First installed in 1895, these now beloved infrastructures were constructed to provide widespread illumination over the growing city at night. Todd’s sculptural nocturne comes to life under the gaze of her own artist-made tower, its lights triggered on and off by sensors. During a one-month winter residency, the artist developed the site-responsive project while living at the park and immersing herself fully in the environment she seeks to illuminate. Through this installation, Todd navigates the complex dynamics of presence and absence, grounding and dislocation, evoked by the transient yet defining experience of freight trains passing by the park through the night. The resulting installation delves into the contradictions of technology’s utopian promise, aiming to locate park visitors in the wake of the train’s connectivity and placelessness.

Simultaneously, Todd unveils her work in How to hold, an exhibition curated by Sweet Pass Sculpture Park at Cluley Projects in West Dallas from March 30 – May 5, 2024, with an artist reception on April 27, 5-7 PM.

In Terra Femme (2021), filmmaker Courtney Stephens delves into the travelogues of female travel filmmakers from the early to mid-20th century. Through her eloquently narrated montage over a spare and pulsing score, Stephens reclaims the voices of these amateur filmmakers while presenting us with something more. In her search for what, she muses, might provide “evidence of the female gaze,” she embarks on a layered exploration of what the narrative of travel offered to women in a rapidly globalizing world. Stephens insightfully notes, “Archives reflect not only what people did and what they saved, but what it meant to cross the threshold.”

Anika Todd (b.1992, Boston, MA) earned her BFA from MassArt and an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Flux Factory NYC, VisArts Center VA, and Co-Lab Gallery in Austin, TX, the last two shows reviewed by the Washington Post (2018) and Glasstire (2019), respectively. Todd has held residencies at Stove Works (2021), NARS Foundation (2020), and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019). In 2019, she received the Austin Cultural Art Council Award, and in 2022, she was a finalist for the NYFA Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design Award. She is currently based in Saint
Louis, MO, teaching sculpture as the Beamont Artist in Residence for Sam Fox School of Art and Design.

Courtney Stephens is a writer/director of non-fiction and experimental films. The American Sector, her documentary (co-directed with Pacho Velez) about fragments of the Berlin Wall transplanted to the U.S., was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. Her essay film, Terra Femme, comprised of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and premiered at the Museum of Modern Art. It has toured widely as a live performance. Her films have been exhibited at The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, BOZAR, the Thailand Biennale, Pacific Film Archives, Walker Art Center, The Royal
Geographical Society, and in film festivals including the Berlinale, Viennale, IDFA, Hong Kong, SXSW, and the New York Film Festival. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Wexner Center, and grants from California Humanities, the Sloan Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

In addition to co-curating the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, she has organized film screenings for The Getty, Flaherty NYC, Human Resources, and Museum of the Moving Image. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Film Comment, Cabinet, Filmmaker, and The New Inquiry.

Sweet Pass Sculpture Park
402 Fabrication St.
Dallas, TX

 sweetpasssculpturepark.com