Developed in Partnership With Maharam and Opening This July, Entryways: Xenobia Bailey Transforms ICA’s Exterior with New Public Art Commission

This July, the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (ICA), unveils a striking new public artwork as part of ICA’s annual Entryways commission by visionary artist Xenobia Bailey. Spanning 400 square feet, the site-specific installation transforms ICA’s façade with a “Funktional” design and visionary illusion inspired by domestic crochet, natural cosmologies, masquerading culture, and local Philadelphia legend Sun Ra’s artistic philosophy. Entryways: Xenobia Bailey was developed in partnership with Maharam, North America’s leading creator of textiles for interiors, and is on view July 12 through August 9, 2026.

“Entryways: Xenobia Bailey continues our partnership with Maharam to transform ICA’s entrance into a space for experimentation,” said Hallie Ringle, ICA’s Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator and Interim Director. “ICA champions exploration and public engagement in meaningful ways, and local artist Xenobia Bailey’s site-specific work will do just that, inspiring visitors and redefining the way we remix, and they encounter, our space.”

For the Entryways commission, Bailey began by crocheting decorative elements of vibrant yarn, before draping these crochet afghans over a ladder and photographing them. These images were digitally composed into the work’s centerpiece: a figure of Afrofuturist musician Sun Ra, whose Philadelphia-based jazz group Sun Ra Arkestra embodied a holistic Black cosmology and philosophy. Bailey drew inspiration from masquerading traditions—used to channel ancestral spirits—and memories of homemakers such as her mother, who transformed household furniture pieces by draping colorful crochet textiles over them. Astrological symbols orbit the figure and reappear across the building’s surface. Later this year, Bailey will also introduce a digital element to her process for the first time. An Augmented Reality (AR) feature will extend the installation into an interactive realm and virtually suspend the masquerade designs, underscoring their multidimensionality and further evolving a “Funktional” Black aesthetics into the future. Deploying intuitive, organic improvisation, Bailey translates the frequencies of Sun Ra’s music into a symphony of crochet stitches, colors, and forms that come to life through AR. Honoring Sun Ra’s ability to bring the frequency of a Black cosmic aesthetic into material culture and lifestyle and using textiles as animating masks that energize space, Bailey’s Entryways design reimagines ICA’s façade as that of Sun Ra’s spirit welcoming visitors and passersby.

To read the full press release, click here.