William Greaves’s cinematic social experiment, In the Company of Men, encapsulates many of the central themes present in Jessica Vaughn’s exhibition, Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful, specifically how Black bodies have been historically marginalized within the workplace. Commissioned by Newsweek magazine in 1969, the film chronicles the racial tension between labor and management…

Taking ICA’s current exhibition Jessica Vaughn: Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful as a starting point, David Hartt, Carrafiell Assistant Professor in Fine Arts at the Weitzman School of Design, and Zoë Ryan, Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director at ICA, will discuss the ways in which the built environment both frames and opens up…

Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful is a major survey of new and recent work by visual artist Jessica Vaughn. Within this exhibition Vaughn considers the intersections between late twentieth- and twenty-first-century work culture, modular architecture—its promise of malleability and universality—and the marginalized workers who have been rendered invisible within these workspaces. Join us…