ICA First Fridays: Lily Cox-Richard Artist Talk

Lily Cox-Richard is an artist whose sculptures and installations take up details of cultural and material histories to explore porousness, energy exchange, and paths of resistance. For their newly commissioned ICA exhibition, Disquiet in the Sand, Cox-Richard presents a series of glass scrying mirrors—divination objects used to unlock insight. Over multiple visits during full-moon cycles, the artist performed rituals that left behind impressions in the sand at White Sands, New Mexico, and other sites with complex human histories. They then used those impressions to create molds for the cast glassworks, which act as lenses, reflecting light while inviting viewers to look deeper and listen for messages that emerge from within themselves and the land.

For this talk, Cox-Richard will describe their process and interest in the divinatory practice known as scrying. They will also provide audience members with a preview of a site-specific installation they will launch in Abner Clay Park as part of InLight Festival on the weekend of October 17.

Doors open at 5 p.m. for cash bar and refreshments, talk starts at 6 p.m.

Join us on February 3, 2026, for an adjoining lecture with VCUarts. VCUarts will proudly present an artist talk by Lily Cox-Richard (M.F.A.’08), associate professor with Sculpture + Extended Media. Hear firsthand how Lily Cox-Richard’s work engages with the histories of labor, natural resources, the politics of viewership, and paths of resistance.

About the Artist: Lily Cox-Richard (she/they/LCR) (b. 1979) is an associate professor of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. Cox-Richard has been awarded an Artadia grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Michigan’s Society of Fellows, and residencies at the Core Program, Millay Colony, RAIR Philadelphia, and the MacDowell Colony. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), Yvonne (Guatemala City), Artpace (San Antonio, TX), Diverseworks (Houston, TX), Hirschl & Adler Modern (New York), and The Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX).