Dear Mazie,

curated by Amber Esseiva
ICA VCU, Richmond, VA
Sep 6, 2024 – Mar 9, 2025

Dear Mazie, is a group exhibition inspired by the life and work of Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984), the trailblazing artist and educator who became the first known Black queer woman to practice as an architect in the United States. Curator Amber Esseiva has commissioned 11 contemporary artists, designers, and architects to create responses to Meredith’s multifaceted legacy for this show. Honoring Meredith’s prodigious and passionate letter-writing (as evidenced by the hundreds of missives Esseiva found in her 5,000-piece archive), the curator has invited the participating artists to consider the epistolary form as a conceptual framework for their commissions. Dear Mazie, is thus something like an exhibition-as-letter, addressed back to the subject at its heart.

Exhibiting artists: AD–WO (Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood), The Black School (Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters), Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Kapwani Kiwanga, Abigail Lucien, Practise (James Goggin and Shan James), Tschabalala Self, and Cauleen Smith.