Image detail: This close-up highlights the vibrant, compressed texture of Air (2024), a monumental commission. The body of the work is built from the foundational growth and effort of the Project a Black Planet initiative: curatorial proposals, meeting notes, theory documents, and the color images of artist works used to map the exhibition’s themes.
Woven into this dense, multicolored architecture are poetry, musical scores, and handwritten letters to the ancestors from the curators, staff, and artists. Suspended from the base of this collective history are African lost-wax filigree brass trade beads and vintage brass bell beads, strung on brass wire and faux leather cord—physically anchoring the spiritual and intellectual labor of every artist considered for the project.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Project a Black Planet's exhibition banners.
Project a Black Planet's lobby title wall with exhibition description
Air at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).
The Art Institute of Chicago, Project a Black Planet's exhibition banners.
Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica
Air (2024) was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago for the landmark exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica. For this historic survey, Charmaine Spencer presents a major, large-scale sculptural installation that contributes to the gallery’s architectural landscape. Project a Black Planet is the first exhibition of its kind expressly devoted to modern and contemporary cultural activity through a pan-Africanist lens, exploring the political and cultural solidarity of African and African diasporic peoples worldwide.
As one of the core commissions for this ambitious project, Spencer’s work explores the intersection of materials and identity on a global stage. The piece manifests the foundational growth and effort of the exhibition’s development, transforming its archives into a resonant vessel that serves as a spiritual conduit between past and present—a focal point for ancestral connection.
Following its debut in Chicago, this international exhibition is currently traveling to world-class institutions, with Spencer’s work featured at:
The Art Institute of Chicago | December 15, 2024 – March 30, 2025
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) | November 6, 2025 – April 6, 2026
The Barbican Centre, London | June 11 – September 6, 2026 | NOW ON VIEW
KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels | November 28, 2026 – Spring 2027
Upon the conclusion of this global tour, the commissioned work will return to Chicago to join the permanent collection of the DuSable Black History Museum, ensuring its legacy as a permanent part of this historic cultural survey.
Ohio Now: State of Nature
moCa Cleveland | January 30 – July 31, 2026
Following its critically acclaimed run at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, the landmark exhibition Ohio Now: State of Nature traveled to moCa Cleveland. This exhibition series, a premier collaboration between the CAC and moCa, connected vital contemporary voices working across the state to explore environmental themes.
As a featured artist in this institutional survey, Charmaine Spencer presented two significant works that explored the urgency of environmental justice: Arms and the landmark installation Amendment. Mounted prominently on the main title wall, this three-piece installation was hand-sculpted using a nutrient-rich mixture of red, white, and black clay combined with organic worm castings, compressed paper pulp and driftwood.
Originally commissioned for the 2018 CAN Triennial, Amendment was featured at moCa Cleveland in this renewed context—addressing toxic, post-industrial spaces through sculptural "guerrilla gardening." Spencer’s work joined a curated selection of Ohio-based artists whose practices investigated humanity’s relationship with the environment, continuing her deep inquiry into how we nourish both the soil and social equality.
Amendment — moCa Cleveland
Installed directly on the main title wall for Ohio Now: State of Nature, this four-part installation serves as the premier threshold work of the exhibition, acting as the very first artistic encounter upon entry into the museum gallery.
NEW WORK | Co-presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art and FRONT International, for the 2025 FRONT Art Futures, Fellowship Exhibition.
The Fifth Vessel
A monumental inquiry into the physical form as a sanctuary for human intellect and collective accountability. Rooted in themes of structural permanence and ancestral reflection, these symbolic vessel structures offer a physical safe haven for our most sacred intangible values: honor, discernment, and ethical truth.
Confronting the complex realities of our past and present, Spencer’s newest work maps the pathways toward sustainable, shared wisdom—suggesting that by deeply examining our choices, we possess the power to shape a better future.
NEW WORK: The Fifth Vessel
Transformer Station | October 2 - December 27
Co-presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art and FRONT International, the landmark exhibition New Work: FRONT Fellows Show served as the capstone to the three-year Art Futures Fellowship. Hosted at the museum’s satellite gallery, Transformer Station, this premier institutional showcase featured new, site-specific installations by four celebrated Northeast Ohio artists.
As the sole artist featured in the venue's Crane Gallery, Charmaine Spencer presented her monumental installation, The Fifth Vessel. As documented in a dedicated feature review by the CAN Journal, the installation utilized raw geological matter and organic materials to construct five large, container-like architectural forms that evoked a powerful bodily and spiritual presence.
Rooted in pre-colonial African cultural forms and metaphysical traditions, The Fifth Vessel established a physical sanctuary for intangible values like honor and collective accountability. Profiled by The Plain Dealeras a critical conversation between personal histories and collective futures, this institutional exhibition explored themes of space, material permanence, and ancestral reflection.
From: Seed To: Root | The Sculpture Center
January 21 – March 5, 2022
This solo exhibition served as the critical catalyst for my invitation to participate in the FRONT International Triennial (2022–2023). It was during From: Seed To: Root that curators from the Akron Art Museum reviewed the work on-site, directly leading to the subsequent museum installation of three sculptures from my elemental series.
Earth is distinctly characterized by the inclusion of Otjize (traditional red clay), known as the "guardian," bound with natural reed grass and hemp.
PRIZM Art Fair | In conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach
December 3 – December 8, 2024
Conceptualized from highly anthropomorphized African spirit or ancestor vessels traditionally crafted by women, these works use the expressive characteristics of natural elements. The raw materials and structural processes are deeply symbolic of the cycle of life, bridging the worlds of the human and the spirit through earth, water, air, and fire.
These structures serve various ritual functions, acting as an axis for prayer or meditation, joining ceremonies, healing the sick, safeguarding the community, and activating ancestral wisdom. The positive intervention of these protective spirits is considered vital to maintaining communal harmony, health, and well-being.
Choir, Installation view of the site-specific sculpture at Quaker Square, Akron, OH, presented in partnership with Curated Storefront for the FRONT International Triennial. Composed entirely of repurposed architectural wood lath, the modular installation investigates social conditioning by altering its physical form with each specific spatial iteration.
Reconstruction
Water, Air and Fire
Reconstruction
Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows
FRONT International Triennial | July 16 – October 2, 2022
Presented across multiple premier regional institutions, this massive contemporary survey explored art as a vehicle for healing, social connection, and material transformation. As a featured triennial artist, Charmaine Spencer presented concurrent, site-specific installations at the exhibition’s primary museum venues, the Cleveland Museum of Art's Transformer Station, the Akron Art Museum and Quaker Square's Curated Storefront, investigating how raw geological matter and structural forms engage with public memory.
The Sculpture Center | Woodland Cemetery
A dual-site commission featuring an interactive sculptural vessel and a corresponding Augmented Reality (AR) installation. Spencer’s site is the entrance to Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood.
Spencer’s augmented reality site is the entrance to Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood.
Crossroads: Still We Rise
The Sculpture Center | July 16 – September 25, 2021
Curated by Robin Robinson and organized by The Sculpture Center, Crossroads: Still We Rise was a transformative, community-engaged exhibition series that explored the overwritten histories of race and neighborhood identity across Cleveland’s East Side. As the city’s first-ever augmented reality (AR) exhibition, the project invited audiences to perceive what is both present and hidden, spoken and unspoken, by superimposing digital art onto public locations of deep cultural significance. Hosted globally through Nancy Baker Cahill’s 4th Wall app, this cutting-edge framework allowed site-specific installations to exist outdoors and remain accessible to the community 24 hours a day, sparking vital public dialogues around historical erasure, structural resurrection, and collective healing.
For this landmark series, Charmaine Spencer developed Listening Eye, a dual-site commission bridging physical and environmental spaces to honor ancestral lineage. Outside the historic stone gates of Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood, the 4th Wall app allowed visitors to experience a monumental, static AR iteration that anchored a contemporary digital presence to an sacred site of unmarked history. Simultaneously, inside The Sculpture Center galleries, the physical installation functioned as a communal sanctuary holding letters to ancestors. In the gallery space, tech developer Ocean Young of RazorEdge built an interactive AR walk-through that isolated the sculpture's organic reed grass elements, setting the symbolic belts into dynamic, fluid motion via on-site iPads to merge physical craftsmanship with responsive digital animation.
seenUNseen
Artists Archives of the Western Reserve and
The Sculpture Center
September 20 – November 16, 2019
Presented by the Cleveland Foundation, seenUNseen was an extraordinary, dual-institutional exhibition that brought over 100 significant works of African American art into direct dialogue with the Northeast Ohio creative landscape. The exhibition mixed rare, celebrated pieces on loan from the renowned Atlanta-based Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection with a curated selection of regional contemporary voices. By juxtaposing masterworks of the broader diaspora with local makers, seenUNseen challenged traditional gatekeeping, examined equity issues in the art world, and illuminated narratives that have historically been obscured or under-appreciated within the institutional canon.
Participating as a featured sculptor in this monumental exchange, Charmaine Spencer’s work provided a visceral grounding within the galleries. Her sculptures acted as physical markers of presence, using her distinct ethos of raw material manipulation to explore identity, endurance, and cultural visibility. Positioned alongside some of the nation’s most significant emerging and established African American artists, Spencer’s contribution to seenUNseen highlighted her ongoing interrogation of social conditioning, giving form to things left unspoken and honoring the resilient, structural threads that connect collective memory across geography and time.
Image Detail: A macro perspective of a multimedia sculpture composed of driftwood and synthetic hair. The hair—intricately wrapped, bundled, and threaded with earthy beads of glass, stone, shell, and wood—fades from deep black to ash gray and brilliant white. This shifting color palette mirrors the natural texture of the weathered wood, blending fiber and branch together as the structure expands upward like growing antlers, capturing an intentional narrative of personal growth and metamorphosis.