Yelena Keller is Assistant Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and was part of the curatorial team for Thomas J Price’s 2022 exhibition at Marcus Garvey Park titled Witness. Witness was presented as part of The Studio Museum’s series of collaborative initiatives, in Harlem, undertaken while the Museum is preparing for construction of its new building, opening this fall.

Thomas and Yelena engaged in a nearly hour-long conversation that addressed a range of themes, including critical considerations for conceiving exhibitions and public installations at a monumental scale, as well as the distinctions and possibilities between sculptures and statues. They examined the role of portraiture, perspective and scale in Price’s work, and reflected on the contextual nuances in how his sculptures are perceived in different geographic and spatial settings—specifically contrasting receptions in New York versus the UK, and in gallery environments compared to public spaces such as Marcus Garvey Park and Times Square.

Their discussion also explored how Price’s work complicates traditional notions of monumentality, interrogating who is represented, how they are portrayed and what is revealed about the viewer through their interpretations or assumptions—such as perceptions of the character’s identity or their worthiness of commemoration. Whereas monuments often depict fictionalized narratives of real individuals, Price’s sculptures present fictional figures that may nonetheless communicate a deeper sense of truth. The conversation further considered the gaze of his sculptures, which rarely meet the viewer directly; the relaxed, lifelike postures of the figures; and the significance of their clothing, which grounds the works in contemporary, everyday experience.

About the exhibition
For ‘Resilience of Scale,’ his first major solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in New York, British artist Thomas J Price presents five towering bronze figures and a large-scale photographic work comprising 18 separate framed images in the gallery’s SoHo location. Together, the works amplify traditionally marginalized bodies and redress structures of hierarchy, inviting questions about who we chose to celebrate in art. ‘Resilience of Scale’ presents an environment where mobility is truly felt: viewers will be able to move through the space to engage with the works directly and from all vantage points, positioning themselves within the artist’s narrative rather observing from a detached distance.