'Lucy Raven: Rounds' at ICA Boston, MA, USA

27 March 2026

From 20 May – 7 September 2026, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston presents 'Lucy Raven: Rounds' at the Watershed. The exhibition marks the United States’ premiere of Hardpan (2025), a large-scale kinetic sculpture co-commissioned with Barbican Centre, London, and Murderers Bar (2025), the final installment in Raven’s series The Drumfire. Sited at the ICA Watershed, the exhibition is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the ICA, with Meghan Clare Considine, Curatorial Assistant at the ICA.

Raven created Murderers Bar on the occasion of the largest dam removal and river restoration project in American history. In the film, dynamite is installed inside Copco 1, a large-scale concrete gravity dam in Northern California. After its detonation, the camera follows the rush of the river 200 miles to the Pacific Ocean and then turns upstream to return to the drained reservoir behind the dam—a stark landscape of sediment that will be transformed in years to come. Projected on a large-scale curved vertical screen, the installation visualizes the landscape’s transformation at a monumental scale. The installation is accompanied by an immersive, four-channel soundtrack composed and performed by Raven’s frequent collaborator Deantoni Parks, echoing the senses of force, rupture, and turbulence in the film.

Find out more via the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston.

Image: Installation views of ‘Lucy Raven: Rounds’ at The Curve, Barbican, October 2025 © Lucy Raven, Courtesy Barbican Art Gallery, Photographer Jo Underhill.