Howardena Pindell, born in Philadelphia in 1943, still remembers a trip through Kentucky with her father. She was eight years old and when they stopped at a root-beer stand, she became aware of the red circles on the bottom of their mugs. It meant, her father told her, that they weren’t white. Here was Pindell’s first experience of the South and segregation. At The Shed, Pindell presents “Rope/Fire/Water,” her first video in 25 years. It sees her weaving her own memories of inequality into the country’s history of racism. Pindell also debuts two large-scale paintings on this subject, and several abstract paintings. —E.C.