Film & Video (Film & Video)

By testing the limits of identification with the camera’s point of view, Delphi Falls cycles through multiple subjectivities. The film misuses more traditional narrative conventions -the suggestion of a story, the anchoring of actors as characters- to have the viewer constantly questioning who or what they are, and where they are located in the film’s world. Delphi Falls was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial film program.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Dragon is the Frame by Mary Helena Clark is an elegy that is somewhat paradoxically organized as a film noir or murder mystery, one that pays direct homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo . But the parts don’t fit, and it is only in the eventual recognition of this faux raccord that Clark’s higher purpose becomes apparent. As we hear Bernard Herrmann’s score, we see the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, and other Vertigo locations in the present day.

Painting (Painting)

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters. While Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) does not depict any actual women, it nevertheless alludes to gender roles and the power of the female gaze. Apparently playful, this scene of two animals has an ominous quality: A bird and a hedgehog confront at each other and the bird appears to be poking, even eating the hedgehog’s eye.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

By Way of Revolution is a series of works by Helina Metaferia that addresses the inherited histories of protest that inform contemporary social movements. In the project, Metaferia works intrinsically with female descendants of prominent historical black activists to produce video art; with women of color organizations to produce socially engaged work; with “radicalism” archives and performance stills to produce works on paper and tapestries; and with museum, gallery, and public spaces to produce participatory performances. Tapestry (Gewel) (2023) is one of a series of tapestries that are all subtitled with names of traditional storytellers from across the African continent.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

In Fading Fields 7 by Elena Damiani, the unstable transparency of the print on silk chiffon is relative to the light and the viewer’s position, varying continually as one moves around the work. As apparitions or ghosts, the images portrayed appear or vanish in the space as faded recollections of a distant landscape. These impressions appear as oscillatory surfaces that fluctuate between presence and absence; they are contingent objects that shift as a result of their environment.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

By Way of Revolution is a series that addresses the inherited histories of protest that inform contemporary social movements. In the project Metaferia works intrinsically with female descendants of prominent historical black activists to produce video art; with women of color organizations to produce socially engaged work; with “radicalism” archives and performance stills to produce works on paper and tapestries; and with museum, gallery, and public spaces to produce participatory performances. Tapestry (Gewel) is one of a series of tapestries that are all subtitled with names of traditional storytellers from across the African continent.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

By Way of Revolution is a series of works by Helina Metaferia that addresses the inherited histories of protest that inform contemporary social movements. In the project, Metaferia works intrinsically with female descendants of prominent historical black activists to produce video art; with women of color organizations to produce socially engaged work; with “radicalism” archives and performance stills to produce works on paper and tapestries; and with museum, gallery, and public spaces to produce participatory performances. The Call is an ongoing video project of performances by descendants of prominent civil rights activists across the United States.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Intersticio (Interstice) by Elena Damiani traces the topography of a non-specific site, an in-between zone. The video presents a panoramic view of two territories of a shifting and unresolved character, composed out of segmented events that visually intersect at a shared horizon point. Over the images, a fragmented and ambiguous poetic narration describes, by means of images found in digital archives, a hybrid site that permutes the representation of nature through its fusion of source material.

Painting (Painting)

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters. While Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) does not depict any actual women, it nevertheless alludes to gender roles and the power of the female gaze. Apparently playful, this scene of two animals has an ominous quality: A bird and a hedgehog confront at each other and the bird appears to be poking, even eating the hedgehog’s eye.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Gikan Sa Ngitngit Nga Kinailadman (From The Dark Depths) by Kiri Dalena is a stylistically collaged film inspired by the true story of a young activist’s drowning. Moving between reality and fantasy, it depicts the story of a dead communist who sinks to the bottom of the ocean into a dreamlike subaquatic utopia. In the film a young woman mourns the death of an activist that took place years ago.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions. Her drawings, sculptures, and photography are active investigations into our often-fallible notions of history. Stone Deaf (2009) is a direct intervention into Karl Marx’s gravesite, for which the artist literally traced the history of Marx’s grave.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Las Bambas by Elena Tejada-Herrera takes the name of a copper mine in the Andean department of Apurímac, Peru. The operations of this mining project were resisted by the local peasant communities, whose protests forced it to paralyze its operations. As of 2023, this is the most serious unresolved social conflict in the country.

Photography (Photography)

A subject’s back stands before a landscape of mountains, arid and majestic, Der Wanderer 3 revisits the theme of man versus nature dear to Romantic painting and the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich in particular. “From him I returned to the theme of the character turning their backs to the viewer. I love the back.

Photography (Photography)

Femme dans la baignoire

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Painting (Painting)

Untitled (Boom Box, Double-Sided) by Mary Ann Aitken is representational painting of a boom box on an unconventionally long canvas painted on both sides, to mimic the scale and appearance of the actual appliance. Known for going against trends, Aitken often favored dimensions, such as the square, that were otherwise considered out of style in contemporary painting. In this double-sided painting, one side depicts the titular boombox set up—a boxy cassette player, flanked by a pair of stereo speakers in front of wood panelling.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Priapus Agonistes by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley is the first work in The Minotaur Trilogy (2013-2015), a trio of videos that reimagine the Greek myth of the Minotaur. The monstrous result of Queen Pasiphae’s infatuation with a bull, the Minotaur lived in a huge maze known as the Labyrinth where he would devour sacrificial offerings of youths and maidens. Traditionally, the story centers on Theseus and his heroic (and successful) quest to conquer the Minotaur, subsequently freeing the people of Athens from their obligations.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the video The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011), Reid Kelley transported her heroine to the French demimonde. The film centers on a pregnant Parisian prostitute who exemplifies Baudelaire’s paean to the superiority of cosmetic over natural beauty. With sets that shift between Sisyphus’s boudoir and the streets of Paris, the work is an antic romp through Revolutionary and post Revolutionary France, with brief vignettes involving everyone from Diderot, Marie Antoinette, and Marat to Robespierre, Napoleon, and Haussmann.

Painting (Painting)

Untitled (Diptych) by Mary Ann Aitken is a pair of paintings; one entirely abstract and the other a hybrid of representational and abstract elements. The left-side painting is a cacaphonous all over composition of brushstrokes layered in the artist’s signature primary colors. In the same color scheme, the right-side painting portrays a still life with an arrangement of flowers as its focal point, with marks and splatter spilling from the left-side composition into the right.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Stone Deaf (Video)

Painting (Painting)

In this untitled acrylic painting, Tessa Mars explores the long-lasting effects of colonialism on the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, particularly in terms of female vulnerability and resilience. Drawing on her interest in retelling stories of her native country, and confronting the past and the present, Mars portrays her cultural essence and heritage by imagining spiritual spaces that connect people and land across time. With a pictorial practice that highlights pastel colors, the divinisation of the figures on the canvas and the spiritual elements within the composition ultimately enhance the narrative of her Caribbean ancestry while conflating the distinctions between autobiographical and historical events.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series. It’s contrasting dark and vibrant tones presage his later series of works, exhibited at L. A.’s Hammer Museum as Scorched Earth. These larger works share a map-like quality, looking like aerial views of some scarred urban landscape.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Home (good infinity, bad infinity) by Lêna Bùi sheds light on the experiences of those who live along, and on, the waterways of Saigon, Vietnam and Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Vietnam is a tropical country of major sand extraction; the UAE a desert country of major land reclamation. Scenes of the Saigon river being heavily eroded due to industrial machines mining sand for construction of skyscrapers are interspersed with images of concrete jungles, and aerial views of Saigon and Sharjah varying in scale and style.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.

Installation (Installation)

Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015). This earlier work considers the process of reconstructing an identity of the Indian workers who arrived in the Caribbean during the post-slavery period. The work addresses the conditions of recruitment of these Indian workers, the strategies of the recruiters, how they lured them onto ships to bring them back to the plantations.