Will Rawls “[siccer]” at ICA, Los Angeles

Adopting the techniques and technologies associated with the cinema and the stage, Will Rawls’ “[siccer]” challenges divisions between the living, the rehearsed, and the performed. Produced with stop-motion animation, the artwork features an all-Black cast of performers—including Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste—in various states of motion and capture. At once fragmented and continuous, the performers’ gestures glitch in and out of focus across a scaffolding of chroma green frames reminiscent of the green screens commonly associated with film production. While the green screen is traditionally meant to disappear, in “[siccer]”, the screen becomes the setting for both performer and visitor. In this refusal to remain fixed, Rawls recontextualizes how racialized subjects navigate forced states of invisibility. And, as Kermit the Frog reminds us, “it’s not easy being green.”

The project’s title is inspired by the Latin adverb sic, often used within brackets to indicate incorrect spelling within a citation. Through this titular reference, “[siccer]” illuminates the ways in which Black subjectivity resists standard Western forms of “correction,” suggesting instead a way of being that is both iterative and endlessly becoming. Exploring the limits and possibilities of gesture and language, Rawls—together with the performers—speculates on collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.

at ICA, Los Angeles
until August 24, 2025