SHE MAD: Laughing Gas

2016 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Martine Syms

location: Los Angeles, California
year born: 1988
gender: female
nationality: American
home town: Los Angeles, California

Her 2016 video installation quotes the sitcom-as-form and also draws from a 1907 comedic short, Laughing Gas. Syms’s 4-channel installation follows the central character (an aspiring artist also named Martine Syms) on a journey home from the dentist after receiving “laughing gas.” Mixing multiple points of view, clips borrowed from TV, as well as layers of comedy, fiction, reality, and critique, Syms’ work also delves into issues of race, culture, and representation. For Los Angeles-based Martine Syms, popular culture, television, and the cultural histories woven through both are starting points for her interdisciplinary art practice.


Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles) uses video and performance to examine representations of blackness. Her artwork has been exhibited and screened extensively, including presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, ICA London, New Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. She has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. Syms’ recently presented exhibitions include Projects 106: Martine Syms, Museum of Modern Art; Borrowed Lady, Simon Fraser University Galleries, Vancouver; Fact and Trouble, ICA London; COM PORT MENT, Karma International, Los Angeles; Vertical Elevated Oblique, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York. From 2007-2011 she was the co-director of the Chicago artist run project space Golden Age, and she currently runs Dominica Publishing, an imprint dedicated to exploring blackness in visual culture. She is the author of Implications and Distinctions: Format, Content and Context in Contemporary Race Film (2011). Her first US solo museum exhibition Projects 106: Martine Syms, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in May of 2017. She is a faculty member in the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Conceptual Art, » Gender, » Race, » American  
» see more

After the Archive Collections Room
© » KADIST

Andrew Grassie

2009

In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...

BC/AD
© » KADIST

Ian Breakwell

2008

“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...

Hat with photograph
© » KADIST

Hans-Peter Feldmann

The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

After the Archive Collections Room
© » KADIST

Andrew Grassie

2009

In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...

BC/AD
© » KADIST

Ian Breakwell

2008

“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

Raven (gun)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

How an Art Foundation Made the Difficult Decision to Sell Its Collection - via Artsy
© » LARRY'S LIST

Before it decided to sell the majority of its collection, California’s di Rosa Foundation explored the exact alternative critics of its decision have suggested....

Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility
© » ARTSY

Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility | Artsy Skip to Main Content Advertisement Art Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility Rawaa Talass Nov 16, 2023 5:13PM Diana Al-Hadid The Bride in the Large Glass , 2023 Kasmin Price on request Portrait of Diana Al-Hadid by Diego Flores...

Museum of the Foreigner
© » KADIST

Ícaro Lira

2012

Icaro Lira has been developing the project “Museum of the Foreigner” since 2015, in which he recounts the trajectories of populations inside Brazil, from the north to the big cities of the south...

A Deep Dive Into Visual Artists On The Small Screen
© » ARTSJOURNAL

Streaming: the best films about artists | Movies | The Guardian Skip to main content Skip to navigation Skip to navigation From left: Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's ‘unabashedly gorgeous' Lust For Life (1956); ‘raw, restless' Jeffrey Wright in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996); the Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint in Halina Ryschka's documentary Beyond the Visible (2019)...

Related works from the » 2010's created around » Los Angeles, California  
» see more

Silencer #16 & #17
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2010

MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...

Serengeti Green
© » KADIST

Phillip Maisel

2015

While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...

Eraser
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2014

Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees...

Chu’u Mayaa
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2017

Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Receding Triangular Square
© » KADIST

Virlani Hallberg

2012

In collaboration with psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Leon Tan, Receding Triangular Square explores traditional Chinese and Taiwanese modalities of psychological healing as alternatives to dominant Western psychiatric and therapeutic practices...

Martine Syms, in conversation with Myriam Ben Salah
© » KADIST

In residency at KADIST Paris in June 2018, American artist Martine Syms introduces her ongoing project Lessons and discusses blackness, psychoanalysis and 80’s sitcoms with curator Myriam Ben Salah (chief editor of KALEIDOSCOPE magazine)...

Budget leaves arts and culture out in the cold (via The Star)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Budget leaves arts and culture out in the cold (via The Star) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles November 16, 2018 THE fact that arts and culture has the lowest priority in government planning was borne out by Budget 2019...

Mom
© » KADIST

Sadie Benning

2017

In borrowing and subverting images from popular culture, Sadie Benning exposes the media’s role in constructing false and oppressive stereotypes of women, with regard to gender and sexual identity...