vanessa german’s “…do you remember when you were the sky?” is dedicated to the residents of the Colored Girls Dormitory of the Louisville Industrial School of Reform (constructed in 1894–96). Though this former space of enclosure has largely been lost to memory, the original building remains, just a stone’s throw away from german’s exhibition at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The only girls known to have resided in the dormitory are recorded because six of them fled in 1913—an incident that (according to a building sign) “underscored the carceral nature of the institution and policies” meant to punish and “correct” young women considered unruly and deviant. Because there are no additional accounts, the extent of abuse within the facility can only be accessed through imagination.
Between the imaginary and the real is where german thrives. Among her first acts of reframing this forgotten history was to designate the group of co-conspirators as the “Midnight Girls Club.” By renaming them, she shifts the informality of meddlesome girls staging an escape attempt into a deliberate act of self-emancipation. Even those who decided to stay do not concede to their situation in this view, but act with agency.
“How do we escape into a world where we can heal our wounds and also live upright in the fullness of our being?” german asks. Through the composition, accumulated materials, and the narrative arc of the works assembled here, she accentuates how emancipation is an ongoing, physical act. Across two rooms, her figurative sculptures manifest the pursuit of uprightness, a foil to the implied crookedness of girls deemed wayward. In the first space, the figures stand on one leg, with the other lifted off the floor; the second room is occupied by two figures planted solidly on both feet. Though german builds these works from dense accretions of found objects, their heaviness is perpetually on the verge of lift, their postures and gestures communicating a sense of movement and urgency.
79.5 x 44.5 x 25 in.;
base: 24 x 42 in. Photo: Mindy Best/Speed Art Museum, © vanessa german
The story begins with The Girl Who Had The Idea, a monochromatic yellow figure balancing on a white stepstool covered in crayon scribbles. Atop her conical head, dripping with yellow beads, is an unlit, star-shaped Christmas-tree topper. Yellow keys dangle from her outstretched arms, showing her purpose in the collective pursuit of freedom. She leans forward, directing us to the other protagonists, particularly The Girl Who Lit the Path. This figure, coated in pink ephemera, also gestures forward, pointing like a guide. Her head is made from a functional, flickering chandelier.
All of the girls in this gallery stand on one foot except The Girl Who Fell, who teeters on a tin of lard, bearing her weight on her heels. Various porcelain mugs, bowls, and tchotchkes are fastened to the core of her body, each fragile object almost bulging outward as if the string holding them might falter, which echoes the story of how the bedsheet rope snapped and she fell from the third floor. The upright, sculpted braids surrounding the unlit chandelier that serves as her head capture the momentum of her descent.
Movement also characterizes Codified By Light: Darkness and Rebellion—All the things that we can see and cannot see, a non-figurative work created during a three-day community-based performance in Louisville last year when german invited audience members to make brushstrokes on canvas. She then took the canvas to her studio and incorporated found material, imbuing the surface with a charged aliveness that draws on many hands. Configured into an arched, window-like form, the canvas becomes part of a wooden cart structure with wheels.
The Midnight Sisters, a multi-headed figure placed nearby, is the only freestanding sculpture in this group given a human face. Made from tar sculpted to evoke different features and personalities, the individual heads look in every direction except backward. Everything about this work gestures forward, despite the weight of indigo-dyed African and denim cloth bundles; even the piece of turf on which the figure rests points forward like an arrow. Almost imperceptible to the eye, the surfaces are covered with particles from the third-floor dormitory window—material evidence of the site and the girls’ flight.
The Look-Out, The Girl Who Rang the Alarm, The Bell-Ringer, whose head is made from a phonograph sound horn, suggests sonic propulsion. The eyes, flowers, headlights, and multiple arrows that burst forth from the horn transform that historically accurate found object into something more like a rocket launcher. Less bottom-heavy than some of the other figures, and almost air-borne, The Look-Out conveys the urgent body language of a runner caught in mid-stride, her compulsive flow of energy directing us into the next space.
While the first room focused on the act of self-emancipation, the second contends with the girls who remained. Here, the mood changes, and the sense of movement becomes more subtle. Those who leap inhabit unstable equilibrium, while those who stay are rooted to the ground. The two figures—The Girls Who Watched At The Windows: Amenita and the Blue Rose and The Girls Who Watched At The Windows: I would have loved to have gone with you…considering friendship as romance—stand flat-footed and stationary, honoring their conviction. Amenita and the Blue Rose is formed by an assemblage of sky blue-painted objects, including a mirror embedded in the back and, in an aesthetic departure from german’s typical style, a found sculpted bust. Detached from the body and enthroned on a child’s chair, this Neoclassical head of a young Black woman can be read as a type of memorial, taking the figure to another, higher plane. In one hand, she holds a radio, an anachronism (unlike the phonograph horn) that implies sonic frequency transporting her into the future and rupturing the ripple of time and space. The other figure is draped in dazzling gold chains, ornaments, and objects, coding her as timeless and futuristic. Above her slightly upturned head is an operational lightbulb that stays on as a constant source of light.
Unlike the figures, whose bodies strain upward, Colored Girls Dormitory Bed #1: A Frightfully Compelling Thing A Nightmare Is, generates movement from within. This work, unique in german’s practice, appears like something out of a dark fairytale. Flowers with teeth, myriapod-like critters, curling fingers and toenails, beady eyes, birds, and snakes emerge from a black bed, while other creatures lurk underneath on a mound of sand. Made during a residency working with glassblowers at the Chrysler Museum of Art, these surreal visions turn nightmares into reality, as german imagines the unknowable, sinister things that happened in the dormitory after dark. The oily-black catches the light, contrasting with the bright colors within the glass to lend the entire scenario a sense of becoming, as if these beings were actively spawning from the bed. What should have been a place of dreams is revealed as a perversion, conjuring the years of abuse that the girls experienced in this site of enclosure.
A tapestry (Threshold) and an array of seven stars complete this second environment. Made of stretched canvas from german’s participatory performances, these works also include hair and a sock from one of the dancers. The transmutation of the canvas repeats the scribbles found on pedestals and various other elements throughout the show. All of these marks conjure the feeling that the ghosts of the girls are doodling among us in real time.
german refuses to let the girls belong fully to either earth or sky. Turf cushions the bare feet of the figures on the pedestals, sand gathers beneath the bed, and Ohio River water combines with pigment to make the co-creative painted lines—all of which anchor them to place—while stars, upward gestures, and lifted bodies continually pull them beyond it. Unbelonging to the sky or ground recalls a phrase from Without Terminus: Untraining an Archive by poet and graphic designer chaun webster, who writes of “the movement of black bodies conscripted to always be fugitive.” german reclaims movement as a sacred realm intrinsic to freedom.
“vanessa german: …do you remember when you were the sky?” is on view at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, through August 9, 2026.
