Courtney Desiree Morris

Courtney Desiree Morris is a conceptual artist whose work often involves ritual. When she came to PS1 for a month-long Center for Afrofuturist Studies residency, her intention was to explore her relationship to her mother’s tribe in Louisiana. 

A Bay Area artist who teaches Gender and Women’s Studies at UC-Berkeley, Morris didn’t know much about Iowa. “When I got there, I decided I wanted to learn more about the pre-colonial history of the area,” she says. A trip to Effigy Mounds in Northeast Iowa led her to build a shell mound in the Close House. She also performed a ritual in nearby Ralston Creek. She created a series of raffia skirts. She collected scraps of canvas from one of the painters in the building to turn into …She did a lot! 

“What else can I do?” she says of her mindset during the residency. “To have no pressure. To even have Kalmia say, ‘You could just rest.’ Having that kind of space where you could do anything felt really rare,” she says, sounding delighted and grateful months after residency ended.

Back in California, she got a lot of surprised reactions from friends and colleagues:  “You went to Iowa?!” Morris was quick to share that some of the work she saw at the Open Air Media Festival was among the most exciting video pieces she’s ever seen. 
“These are world class artists living in the Midwest just quietly doing their work,” she says. And at the center of it, is PS1. “I was taken aback by how rich the creative life of PS1 is and how active it is in shaping the creativity of the community. It’s an arts organization that’s really punching above its weight.”