Prayer (Houston) by James Webb

Join us for Prayer (Houston) by James Webb, an interfaith, community artwork exhibited at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, as part of Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions, opening on October 10, 2024. Prayer is a multi-channel sound installation comprising recordings of vocal worship from individuals who belong to various faiths and spiritual affinities from around the city. We invite you to contribute a prayer, chant, meditation, or reading representing your religious or spiritual tradition. Your vocal recording will be conducted in person during a scheduled session to ensure high audio quality for this evocative installation. Share your voice in this powerful celebration of our city’s diverse spirituality.

What is the artwork Prayer?

Prayer is a multi-channel sound installation comprising
recordings of vocal worship (e.g. praying, chanting, singing,
readings, intoning, invocation, etc.) from individuals who
belong to the various faiths and spiritual affinities from around
the Greater Houston area.

These can include, but are not limited to all denominations of
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Judaism,
as well as new spiritual movements and traditional faiths. All
religions and languages are welcome. Several hundred
recordings are made in the course of each production.

Participate:

For more information, contact our coordinator, Zaynab Hilal, at houstonprayer2024@gmail.com or (832) 716-2277.

James Webb’s Prayer (Houston) is co-commissioned by the Blaffer Art Museum, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, and KADIST.

About the Artist:

Jarod Lew is an an artist who draws on photography to explore intergenerational encounters with diasporic loss, displacement, and postmemory. Through this exploration, my work contends with the performativity of race and its instability as a locus of meaning.

His project, Please Take Off Your Shoes was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2021, and was exhibited in a group exhibition at SFMOMA titled Kinship: Photography and Connection in 2023. His other project, In Between You and Your Shadow, examines his relationship with his mother, who was the fiancé of Vincent Chin--the subject of a hate-crime that brought national attention to matters of Asian American civil rights.

His works are held in public and private collections including the Cantor Art Center, Detroit Institute of Arts, Kadist, San Francisco, Harvard Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lew’s work has been written about in Aperture, Artforum, Elephant Magazine, and Aesthetica Magazine.