Milcah Bassel: Imaginal Cells

Reception and Artist Talk: September 24, 4-7 p.m.

Imaginal Cells presents recent work by Milcah Bassel exploring parallel patterns across individual and collective bodies. Through sculpture, drawing, artist books, and activated installations, elemental materials such as clay and handmade paper probe space, emptiness, and the ways in which form reconfigures under conditions of change. Named for the dormant cells that awaken during metamorphosis, the exhibition proposes radical imagination and perseverance, not as remedies for an ailing condition, but as transformational forces waiting to emerge.

Milcah Bassel is a transdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ. Her work explores how bodies—individual and collective—accumulate, exchange, and transform patterns. Incorporating installation, performance, drawing, and handmade media, her pieces often invite physical engagement and viewer participation. She earned a Post-Baccalaureate in Studio Art from Brandeis University and an MFA in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. 

Bassel has exhibited and performed at the Rubin Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Newark Museum, Zimmerli Art Museum, Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, PS122 Gallery, William Paterson University, and Project for Empty Space, with art fairs including PULSE, EAB, Untitled, and Select. She is the recipient of two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships, a Newark Artist Accelerator Grant, and a Jersey City Arts and Culture Individual Artist Fellowship Award. Residencies and fellowships include the Center for Book Arts (NY), Bronx Museum AIM, Haystack, ArtYard, ACRE, the Brodsky Center, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and Guttenberg Arts. Her work is held in the collection of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was recently featured in the seminal publication Radical Paper: Art and Invention with Colored Pulp (The Legacy Press). She currently teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. 

Artist Website:

www.milcahbassel.com

Instagram:

@milcahbassel