Betye Saar's Dual Exhibition at Roberts & Tilton Features Mojotech Installation and Career Reflections

Betye Saar presented two concurrent exhibitions at Roberts & Tilton in Los Angeles from 10 September to 17 December 2016, aligning with her career survey at Fondazione Prada in Milan. The first, Black White, occupied the project space with assemblage sculptures and collages, including a 1964 etching, arranged monochromatically to critique color symbolism. Blend, in the main gallery, centered on the large mixed-media installation Mojotech (1987), measuring nearly 7.5 meters, created during a residency at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT in Cambridge. Mojotech features a ziggurat of panels with occult symbols on circuit boards, mirrors, clocks, and animal bones, satirizing technological faith. Another key work, Pause Here – Spirit Chair (1996), incorporates neon, trinkets, and a medallion commemorating Martin Luther King's 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, transforming kitsch into political homage. Saar's quieter side emerged in Black White through collages like Every Secret Thing (Almost) (1982), with sewn paper and tarot cards, highlighting her interplay between explicit meaning and mystery. The exhibitions underscored her career-long oscillation between political commentary and personal intuition, using found objects to address race and spirituality. This coverage originally appeared in the December 2016 issue of ArtReview.