MATERIO-MANCY
CURATED BY VILLAGER
Featuring Alexander D’Agostino, Lehna Huie, G. Pack, VILLAGER, Winter Dior Hart, Jasmeen Al Rayyes, and Anna Divinagracia.
The Compound is proud to present Materio-mancy: a group exhibition guest-curated by Nigerian-born Transdisciplinary artist and Cultural Producer VILLAGER, on view from July 31 to August 22, 2026.
Materio-mancy brings together seven (7) artists: Alexander D’Agostino, Lehna Huie, G. Pack, VILLAGER, Winter Dior Hart, Jasmeen Al Rayyes, and Anna Divinagracia, all currently living and working in Baltimore City, into a shared nexus of alchemical inquiry where material sensitivity operates congruently as method and magic, and contemporary urgencies meet historical continuities.
“Having lived and worked in Baltimore for over 8 years, I curated this exhibition particularly with Baltimore in mind, not only thinking about how the city shapes the artists through the material conditions and metaphysical stimulus which they experience and in turn gives life and meaning to their work, but also how the seemingly “local” discourse being generated here is akin to the conversations being had on national and global spaces about how we are shaped and transformed by what we experience and encounter”, says VILLAGER, Nigerian-born Transdisciplinary Artist and Cultural Producer, Curator of Materio-mancy.
Drawing upon a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, assemblage, and installation, the participating artists in Materio-mancy invite the viewers as the final participant, to embrace, sense, and bear witness to the energy and the magic embedded in the material and the metaphysical, respective and independent of each artist’s temporal and spatial understanding of their practice of alertness which holds time and gesture beyond the body and space itself as divinatory alchemy.
Materio-mancy is a call to sustain attention to what you might not immediately hear, touch, see, feel. An invitation to the quiet, potent, and transformative magic which is felt at every level of surface, structure, and spirit.
“This exhibition captures the pulse of Baltimore’s contemporary art community. What makes it so compelling is not just the diversity of mediums or artistic practices, but the diversity of lived experiences that converge in one space. Together, these artists create a narrative that reflects the complexity, resilience, and creative energy of the city. Rather than speaking with a single voice, the exhibition embraces many perspectives, reminding us that Baltimore’s artistic identity is strongest when those individual stories come together in conversation.” — Ricky Parker, Curator, Reginald F. Lewis Museum.
In this field where material and matter carries the magic of memory and intention, the exhibition calls viewers to stand closer and allow their inherent assumptions about what things are, to be challenged & interrupted, inviting a slowed sensing, a reexamining one that lingers long enough to regenerate a consideration of what materials have passed through their own lives and what energies, histories, stories, and legacies those encounters have absorbed, deconstructed, produced, and transformed.
Materio-mancy also looks to the legacy of Jack Whitten, whose dedication to his work of rescuing objects, reassembling them, and reanimating them with righteous meditation transformed them into material metaphors of education, navigation, reverence, spiritual defense, healing, and much more.
In Odyssey, the 2018 publication supporting Jack Whitten’s exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, He is quoted as saying, “My involvement with all of these mechanical objects is the transformation of them into spiritual objects. To be used in the ritual of survival within a technological society.” As such, this exhibition, although arguably engaging through the commonplace tradition of presenting artworks within a questionably accessible space, nevertheless initiates the viewer into becoming an active creator-magician within this charged topography. It yearnfully demands a kind of flexible viewership and participation which is less concerned with the outcome of what seeps out of the solitude and darkness in which the artist willingly confines themselves, and more occupied with the processes undertaken in that very place. As such, Materio-mancy wishes to implicate the materials, the artist, and the light matter transmitted from their mind to their hand, to the viewer and their senses—passing onto them the mystery of this unending business of concealing and revealing, in a magical final act of witnessing.
Materio-mancy will be on view at The Compound, 2239 Kirk Ave, from July 31 to August 22, 2026.
Join us for the Opening reception on July 31 from 6 PM – 8 PM, and the Artist Talk facilitated by local curators on August 22, 5 – 8 PM.
Gallery Hours: Fri & Sat 12 – 4 PM, Tue – Thur by appointment only.
Cover artwork: “The Return of Yaffa/Aroos al Bahr, 2025” by Jasmeen Al Rayyes
