In the site-responsive exhibition Hush Harbor , Tarik Jeremiah Brown transforms the Sunroom into a contemporary, antebellum hush harbor—a secret gathering place of refuge and worship rooted in Black American histories of survival and faith. Through sculpture, moving image, and sound, the installation evokes these shelters—which were often secluded in wooded landscapes—as sites of collective care and embodied belief, grounded in relationships to both land and spirit. Situated at Wave Hill between the woodlands and the Hudson River, the work engages the harbor as both a literal and symbolic site of arrival, protection, and possibility.
The exhibition title also draws from the Proto-Indo-European roots of the word harbor: heri (“army” or “host”) and bhergh- (“to hide,” “to protect,” “to rise,” or “to ascend”), underscoring themes of shelter, collective presence, and spiritual elevation. In so doing, Hush Harbor centers quieter forms of knowledge, inviting movement between what has been obscured or archived and what must be imagined, remembered, or re-envisioned.
Wave Hill