Milford Graves’ music, science and botany work explored in new exhibit, A Mind-Body Deal

Spanning from multimedia sculptures to archival recordings and hand-painted album covers.

Milford Graves’ multifaceted practice is being celebrated in a new exhibition called A Mind-Body Deal, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Philadelphia this September.

Despite being known primarily as a jazz drummer and percussionist, Graves’ varied practices have seen him invent a martial art form called Yara, train as a cardiac technician, work as a professor of music and holistic medicine, and patent stem cell regeneration technology.

Aiming to connect these diverse yet interrelated strands, A Mind-Body Deal brings together Graves’ hand-painted album covers and posters, multimedia sculptures, photographs, costumes, archival recordings, ephemera and more.

Ultimately, the exhibition “is an attempt to open the doors of his habitat to the spark of curiosity in our own minds, so we too may learn to weave our mind-bodies with the rhythms of the world around us,” explains the museum.

A Mind-Body Deal will run from the 25th September 2020 to the 24th January 2021 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Philadelphia.

Head here for more info.

Address:

Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 118 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

[Please note the ICA Philadelphia is temporarily closed, due to Coronavirus.]

Photo credit, in order of appearance: Milford Graves, Pathways of Infinite Possibilities; Yara in the Dojo, 1992, photo courtesy of the artist; Mixed media collage, 1994, photo courtesy of the artist.