Gallery 305 presents Boxed In, a solo exhibition by Haitian-American artist Jean Patrick Icart-Pierre, opening September 9 and continuing through November 27, 2026.

In Boxed In, Icart-Pierre transforms discarded Nike and Air Jordan shoe boxes into monumental human silhouettes. Cut apart, reconstructed and assembled into bodies, the familiar packaging moves beyond its commercial function and becomes a material for examining identity, aspiration, consumption and value.

For Icart-Pierre, the shoe box is not simply something discarded after a purchase. It carries its own cultural history. It can be saved, stacked, displayed and protected—the container becoming almost as meaningful as the object it once held.

By turning those boxes into human figures, Boxed In shifts the relationship between consumer and commodity. The body is literally constructed from the language of consumption.

The work is particularly rooted in the cultural significance of sneakers within Black American life, where footwear has operated simultaneously as fashion, status, self-expression, aspiration and cultural currency.

Yet Icart-Pierre avoids prescribing a single interpretation. His silhouettes stand, walk, gesture, dance and occupy space. They remain anonymous enough for viewers to bring their own histories and associations to them.

“I’m interested in what happens when an object we normally think of as packaging becomes the body itself. At that point, the box is no longer holding the object—we are inside the box.”
— Jean Patrick Icart-Pierre

Boxed In continues Icart-Pierre’s broader practice of transforming familiar materials and images into works that examine Black identity, history, popular culture and the structures that shape how Black bodies are seen and valued.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jean Patrick Icart-Pierre is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, assemblage and installation. His work draws upon Black popular culture, historical imagery, consumer objects and everyday materials to examine questions of race, identity, memory, resistance and value.

Icart-Pierre earned his BFA from The Cooper Union and his MA and MFA from Brooklyn College. His early career included participation in the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program.

His recent bodies of work include Boxed In, Still Missing, The Resistance, Black Flight, and MauMau/Icons: Iteration