ICP at Mana’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence, Claudia Sohrens—a Brooklyn-based artist born in Hamburg, whose practice examines the role of the artist as researcher, archivist, producer, and cultural activist—was given unfettered access to ICP’s collections and invited to mine its archives.

“Red Spotted Purple”: Roman Vishniac’s Science Work is the result of Sohrens’s discovery of a little-known body of work by photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990). Sohrens was enchanted by Vishniac’s mounted prints, which had been used as display boards by scientific societies and research institutes, and she was drawn to the wordplay and poetry of his captions. In this exhibition, Sohrens explores the physical traces of the archive as well as broader questions about originality and authorship.