Sculpture (Sculpture)

In Erin Jane Nelson’s 2019 body of work Av, panels are covered in collaged images and shellacked with resin or epoxy: photographs of plants intermingle with pictures of men and women engaging in various spiritual activities, cartoons of mothers and their children, or black and white images of window panes. The panels and ceramics act as backdrops upon which Nelson attempts to establish connections between the natural world and the various cultural and religious orders we impose upon it. She incorporates Jewish symbolism and archival photographs alongside her ongoing photographic practice documenting the environmental collapse of her home region.

Advanced Technology (Advanced Technology)

The Great Adventure of the Material World Knight by Lu Yang is a video game world in which an androgynous protagonist goes on a hero’s journey to overcome their understanding of the material world as a coherent, objective truth. Looping arcade music builds suspense as the artist mobilizes varying aesthetics—Sinofuturist cityscapes, Kawaii, religious imagery, anime characters, and body scans of the artist—to propel the viewer through a series of levels, including heaven, hell, and various sites populated by deities and monsters. While traversing these worlds, the protagonist encounters a dizzying array of characters while posing a series of questions about the subjective nature of reality, desire, and suffering.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Jepira is a mythical and essential place of the spiritual dimension for the Wayuu people. It is the starting point and final resting place in their transcendence process which is part of the territory and not dissociated from it, such as in the Catholic notion of Heaven. Today, the Pilon de Azúcar hill which corresponds with Jepira is part of their reclaimed land and connects this dessert culture to the sea; it is the place the Wayuu go when they need to speak with the dead which, along with dreams, is the main way to access spiritual knowledge.

Painting (Painting)

Strongly influenced by history and memory, Goddy Leye’s paintings are based primarily on stories and mythologies. Containing ideas, emotions, and sensibilities, signs and symbols occupy an important place in Leye’s work, though he has to retrieve them from an interrupted history. The painting Animal was made in reference to an important precolonial kingdom, Bamun.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

The Wings by Pichet Piaklin is a creation story of fragility, where the desire for freedom is mired in blood red by the inculcation of faith and violence. Piaklin was born and continues to live and work in Thailand’s deep south, a geographical area once known as the Pattani Kingdom (now the Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces), before it was annexed by the Siam Kingdom in the early 1900s. As a consequence of unreconciled historical conflict, this predominantly Muslim community continues to endure oppressive social and political conditions under the ruling Thai Buddhist monarchy.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

All Nations are Created Special is a black and white woodcut print by the artist collective Pangrok Sulap. Emblazoned across this fantastical 10 metre long print is the Bahasa Malaysia phrase Semua Bangsa Tercipta Istimewa , which loosely translated means “All Races are Special”. Pangrok Sulap takes the translation one step further, as the title of the work declares “All Nations are Created Special”.

Photography (Photography)

This early photographic work by Fre?de?ric Nauczyciel, titled Untitled (Boîte à prière, Istanbul, Novembre 2005) , features a young man in religious attire reading a religious text from inside a glass prayer box. Seemingly truncated by the shadows cast upon his seated position, the man is dramatically illuminated by a white neon light above. The harsh synthetic light reflects off of the man’s white robe and the glass box to create a haunting, artificial glow.

Installation (Installation)

Projet d’attentat contre l’image? (Acte 3) by Sinzo Aanza brings together literature and objects in their varied forms. This project stems from the artist’s interest in the syncretism that emerged after Congo’s independence in 1960.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

escenario chacana by Claudia Martínez Garay is a sculptural work composed of a frame-like structure that contains a series of ceramic pieces. It references the Chakana, an Andean cross that encompasses the different levels of existence (known as Pachas) and sacred elements contained in the Indigenous cosmologies of the region. It often appears in the geometrical motifs of textiles and ceramics.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Through the language of dance and choreography, Void by Joshua Serafin narrates the creation of a new God, the birth of a futuristic deity. Serafin’s research into the making of this dance video is centered around creation myth stories of pre-colonial animistic religions from the Philippines, which were suppressed by the Spanish imposition of Catholicism. Through movement, the materiality of his bodily presence on the screen, and the accompanying sci-fi soundtrack, this work proposes the foundation of a queer mythology; the nascent moment of a ‘queer spiritual force’ coming out of an apocalyptic era, perhaps our current one, that has arrived to refund a new kind of humanity.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Ranging from Baudelaire to the Koran, each of Hassan Massoudy’s drawings are titled with a quotation from a text. In the case of La beauté sauvera le monde, the text originated from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot , alluding to aspirations, models of behavior and words of wisdom. The image itself, though generated in a hybrid manner relating to Arabic and Japanese calligraphy, suggests both fluttering flags and buildings rising high out of the desert as one would see in many developing Middle Eastern countries.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Concerned with the early history of Singapore, Zai Kuning spent many years living with and researching the history of the Riau peoples who were the first inhabitants of Singapore. Inspired by the women of Riau, Back to Mother seemingly traces the central role of maternal figures in nourishing of Riau’s history as an early archipelago kingdom that was Hindu, Buddhist, and animist prior to 14th-century Muslim invasion. Organic materials such as beeswax form a layer of balm protecting threads of red paint symbolic bloodlines in a turtle-formed mandala—a primordial womb that recalls the Hindu and animistic origin of Singaporean society.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Jaali – Horizontal references religious practices in Hungary that were considered as a civil disobedience throughout the 1950s. In their text associated to the work the artists state: “My ancestors on my father’s side were rather elegant Hungarian noblemen—lots of churches, lots of religious education. My parents went to church as a form of civil resistance.

Installation (Installation)

De sino à sina (From Bell to Fate) is a six-channel sound installation by Carla Zaccagnini exploring the relationship between modern Brazil and its colonial past. The sound installation is made from a recording of the bell at Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Brancos, a Baroque-style chapel that is one of the first chapels in Ouro Preto (previously Vila Rica) in the region of Minas Gerais. The work references the execution of José da Silva Xavier (1746-1792), also known as “Tiradentes”.

Textile (Textile)

A “mata ni pachedi” is a piece of painted textile that depicts narrative images of goddesses. Traditionally, the images would be painted onto a piece of cloth found in the temple. Also known as the “kalamkari” (a hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile), “mata ni pachedi” literally translates to “behind the mother goddess”.

Photography (Photography)

Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia. Through photomontage digital operation, an identical elephant is superimposed in front of iconic landmark of the city: Parangtritis Beach, Sultan Square, the City Monument and Mount Merapi. These four locations are spiritual symbols and the subject of cosmological beliefs in Indonesia and the imagery of elephant has long been considered as a cultural and religious icon.

Textile (Textile)

Designed by the artist and fabricated in collaboration with Kashmiri artisans in India, Baseera Khan’s Psychedelic Prayer Rugs combine visual iconography traditional to Islam, such as the crescent moon and lunar calendar, with brightly coloured symbols of personal significance to the artist: a pair of embroidered sneakers, a fragment of an Urdu poem, and the Purple Heart medal. Visually seductive yet charged with political and symbolic associations, the rugs bridge elements of American popular culture with aspects of Islamic worship that may be poorly understood in contemporary secular contexts. Encouraged by Khan to take their shoes off and interact with the rugs, viewers participate in a decolonizing process as they meditate on their poetic allusions or perform the traditional salat, the daily prayers that constitute one of the five pillars of Islam, the others being faith, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The absurd condition of human survival under environmental degradation and geonational balkanization is taken as a starting point for WA’AD by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. The work’s premise is a confessional narrative emerging from a Palestinian astronaut on a desperate international flight mission to colonize Mars. That there is also an Israeli astronaut on the same mission plays into the complexities of the landed history of ethnic antagonism between Israel and Palestine, which has stretched on for centuries.

Painting (Painting)

5901 NW 2nd Ave., Miami, FL 33127 (Botanica) is a series of paintings that artist Eddie Arroyo created over an extended period of time, depicting the same site as it appeared from 2016 to 2018. Like the series shown at the Whitney, their focus is a building complex that until recently housed a Voodoo Botanica and Variety Shop, another iconic set of businesses on NE 2nd Avenue in Little Haiti that housed practitioners of voodoo proffering candles, potions, and incense. It was one of many businesses in the area bearing paintings by Serge Toussaint, a local artist and professional sign painter known for his portrayals of Little Haiti.

Painting (Painting)

Sahana Ramakrishnan’s work blends cultural influences, spanning a range of visual mythologies, she weaves together a tapestry of pop cultural references that are upended by the artist’s exploration of identity, sexuality and gender perspectives. Narrative journeys are central to myth, and Ramakrishnan’s own journey through culture, mythology and sexuality is echoed in the physical matter she uses to create her work. The artist embarks on Odyssean quests for her materials.

Photography (Photography)

Zhou Tao spent almost two years in 2017 and 2018 in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in China exploring the activities of humans and other species in that particular topography between the mountain, the land and the desert. From the discovery of ancient desert villages to the billions of black chickens that will be raised under the snow-covered Kunlun Mountains, the resulting film and the photographs capture the climate and landscape, listening to the desert’s chanting and whispering, while attempting to construct a unique topology. Shot during the film production, the accompanying stunning photograph Winter North Summer South No.

Painting (Painting)

Young Min Moon’s recent paintings repetitively portray the rituals bound up in the Korean tradition of Jesa. Even amidst the disappearance of many Korean customs, Jesa, a type of Confucian ancestor veneration rites, remains a practice in South Korean society that cannot be easily discarded. Throughout the artist’s childhood, Jesa were the only moments through which he could find peace and safety in times that were rife with violence and commotion.

Photography (Photography)

Zhou Tao spent almost two years in 2017 and 2018 in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in China exploring the activities of humans and other species in that particular topography between the mountain, the land and the desert. From the discovery of ancient desert villages to the billions of black chickens that will be raised under the snow-covered Kunlun Mountains, the resulting film and the photographs capture the climate and landscape, listening to the desert’s chanting and whispering, while attempting to construct a unique topology. Shot during the film production, the accompanying stunning photograph Winter North Summer South No.

Painting (Painting)

Young Min Moon’s recent paintings repetitively portray the rituals bound up in the Korean tradition of Jesa . Even amidst the disappearance of many Korean customs, Jesa, a type of Confucian ancestor veneration rites, remains a practice in South Korean society that cannot be easily discarded. Throughout the artist’s childhood, Jesa were the only moments through which he could find peace and safety in times that were rife with violence and commotion.

Textile (Textile)

Designed by the artist and fabricated in collaboration with Kashmiri artisans in India, Baseera Khan’s Psychedelic Prayer Rugs combine visual iconography traditional to Islam, such as the crescent moon and lunar calendar, with brightly coloured symbols of personal significance to the artist: a pair of embroidered sneakers, a fragment of an Urdu poem, and the Purple Heart medal. Visually seductive yet charged with political and symbolic associations, the rugs bridge elements of American popular culture with aspects of Islamic worship that may be misunderstood in contemporary secular contexts. Encouraged by Khan to take their shoes off and interact with the rugs, viewers participate in a decolonizing process as they meditate on their poetic allusions or perform the traditional salat, the daily prayers that constitute one of the five pillars of Islam, the others being faith, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Truong Cong Tung’s Journey of a Piece of Soil (2013) and its accompanying object-based installation of the same name (2014) consider the function of ritual in larger modes of collective engagement and cultural production. In examining how spirituality inflects social engagement, Truong’s contemplates the juncture at which the rational beings encounter the unexplained while also suggesting how embodied practices offer vital conduits for experiencing new modes of consciousness. The video features a man dressed in camouflage fatigues with a blue cap tilling a patch of red-clay soil amidst a green-stalk covered patch of land.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

– In whiche a lemyng starre returneth in the yeer foretolde and alle thing that spak to us turneth ayeyn to silence – Sixth episode of The Unmanned and sharing the same camera movements as the episode “1997 – The Brute Force”, “Mil troi cens quarante huyt” refers to the appearance of a comet in 1759 – thus validating the computation and rational prediction of its return by the British astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley. The action of the film goes back four centuries earlier, in 1348, and unfolds around one unique scene: the escape and the death of a bishop and his court in a forest during the first major outbreak of the Black Plague which was said at the time to be born in the hair of comets.

Installation (Installation)

On September 22, 1940 the French signed an accord, which granted Japanese troops the right to occupy Indochina. The Japanese presence in Indochina lasted until the end of World War II and during the occupation, jute supplies from India were interrupted. Jute was used to make sacks as well as gunpowder, a crucial material for the war industry.

Photography (Photography)

Rudolph Schindler’s designs, part of a practice he called “Space Architecture,” marry interior with exterior and space with light. The architect’s longtime studio and residence, which he built in Los Angeles in 1922, exemplifies this philosophy, and has since become an influential part of the modernist architectural canon. In Untitled (Schindler House #01) (2007), Luisa Lambri describes Schindler’s studio by capturing its aftereffects—the play of light and shadow cast through branches onto a surface.

Photography (Photography)

Capture is a photographic series by Paolo Cirio in which the artist sourced 1000 public images of police officers’ faces and processed them with facial recognition technology. The original photographs were taken during protests in France, Cirio collected these images and created an online platform containing a database of the 4000 police faces that the AI program isolated. The artist crowdsourced their identification by name and then publicly exposed the officers by printing their headshots and posting them throughout Paris.