DOCSLIB.ORG

Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

CURRENT AND UPCOMING Group exhibition SOFT POWER, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA October 26, 2019 – February 17, 2020 Journey Beyond the Arrow, curated by Zoe Butt, Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates March 7 - June 10, 2019 TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN Born in 1976 in Saigon, lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam ARTWORK DETOUR: LIVED WORLDS, 2018 EXHIBITION, ART021 SHANGHAI CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR Detour examines the consequences of globalization and the return to regionalism in the Pacific Rim through the stories of its people. The Pacific Rim—the countries that surround the Pacific Ocean—has been long used as a military and economic term that encompasses a vast history of trade and migration. The region was also the starting point for Detour: Lived Worlds, a special section of Art021, a contemporary art fair in Shanghai. The works in the section are as varied as the regions which they represent. At Páramo, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American artist who left Vietnam in the ‘70s, took the refugee blankets given by NGO workers to those out at sea to create imaginary cartographies that represent their homes. Detour: Lived Worlds, 2018 Exhibition view, Páramo | ART021 Image courtesy of ART021 Contemporary Art Fair Engulfed (detalle), 2018 Resin and space blanket on canvas 142.4 x 212.4 x 4 cm Tattered, 2018 Punctured, 2018 Resin and space blanket on canvas Resin and space blanket on canvas 44 x 65 x 4 cm 58 x 86 x 4 cm EMPTY FOREST, 2017 EXHIBITION Empty Forest is a body of work comprising objects and videos that explore the relationships between mythology, worship, animal extinction, human consumption and political protest. Can the concept of extinction become tangible, acting as a material that can serve as a conduit for understanding our belief systems? There are beliefs in Vietnam originating from centuries of influence from traditional Chinese medicine that consuming rhino horn can cure cancer amongst a variety of other illnesses. Rhinos have recently become extinct in Vietnam. Beyond the region, this belief has created a global environmental emergency regarding rhinoceros populations all over the world, having the most impact specifically in South Africa. Tons of illegal rhino horn from South Africa are seized on route to Vietnam and China in recent years. Similarly, another species, the pangolin, is seeing the same plight. Because their scales are believed to treat a multitude of illnesses, illegal pangolin poaching, and trading is leading it towards extinction of the species in Southeast Asia, India and West Africa. It is that layer of social psychology in which mythical animals, like the dragon, the kirin, and the phoenix are believed to be auspicious in certain cultures and to have influence on the different factors of one’s life, such as health, financial success and longevity that add layers of complexity to the human and animal relationship. This project pits traditions of worship against practices of consumption. These objects play between the fantastical imaginaries of the past and new imaginations of the future to explore the complexities of our relationship with the natural world as well as the possibilities of an alternative connection to mythology and nature world. Empty Forest, 2017 Exhibition view The Factory Contemporary Art Center, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Feng Shui Monster (Buy Me I’ll Bring Good Fortune), 2017 The Nouveau Riche Wanna Eat Everything, 2017 Concrete, ceramic, brass, porcupine quills with custom pedestal Composite, bamboo and fabric 37.7 x 33.8 x 20” / 96 x 86 x 51 cm 61 x 26.7 x 23.6” / 155 x 68 x 60 cm The Things That Are Living Are Dead No. 5, 2017 Diptych: Photographic ink-jet print 35.4 x 19.6” / 90 x 50cm (sheet, each) 36.2 x 20.4” / 92 x 52cm (frame, each) Ed. 1/5 + 2 AP THE ISLAND, 2017 SHORT FILM; 42 MIN The Island is a short film shot entirely on Pulau Bidong, an island off the coast of Malaysia that became the largest and longest-operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The artist and his family were some of the 250,000 people who inhabited the tiny island between 1978 and 1991; it was once one of the most densely populated places in the world. After the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shuttered the camp in 1991, Pulau Bidong became overgrown by jungle, filled with crumbling monuments and relics. The film takes place in a dystopian future in which the last man on earth - having escaped forced repatriation to Vietnam - finds a United Nations scientist who has washed ashore after the world’s final nuclear battle. By weaving together footage from Bidong’s past with a narrative set in its future, Nguyen questions the individual’s relationship to history, trauma, nationhood, and displacement. Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s The Island was part of the selected artworks for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Portrait of a Refuge as a Refugee II, 2017 Inkjet on photo paper (stills from short film) 40 x 71 cm / 15.75 x 27.95” The Island, 2017 Exhibition view Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico Portrait of a Refuge as a Refugee I, 2017 Portrait of a Refuge as a Refugee VI, 2017 Inkjet on photo paper (stills from short film) Inkjet on photo paper (stills from short film) 40 x 71 cm / 15.75 x 27.95” 40 x 71 cm / 15.75 x 27.95” Edition of 3 + 2APs VIET NAM THE WORLD TOUR, 2017 PROJECT Viet Nam The World Tour began in 2010 as an attempt to create a “rogue-nation-unbranding” campaign. It appropriates marketing language, graffiti strategies, hip-hop vernacular, and internet video distribution platforms to re-associate a historically colonized and mediated national identity with an entirely new mediated history. Very soon after its initial installment in Amsterdam and Paris, it became part of a collective project by The Propeller Group, enabling it to expand to something more like a large-scale campaign. This online media platform is an attempt to create a mechanism that re-works and problematize ideas of nation-hood and nation-branding by becoming its nation- branding campaign that sets out on a challenge to re-associate a historically saturated icon with renewed meaning. If history is an immense archive determined by the printed/written word, impenetrable, how does one overcome its hold on the current state of relations? How can one interject into that archive to re-adjust or counter- balance its favoritism? If George Orwell was correct in saying, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” How then can we interject into this dialogue? Viet Nam The World Tour collaborates with leading street dancers, graffiti artists, public muralists, thinkers, writers, designers and artists and brings them on tour around the world; creating public interventions, performances, interactive events and workshops, and giving away t-shirts, stickers, and other memorabilia. The Propeller Group’s most recent iteration of the project, entitled Birds of No Nation, is a traveling mural that features a collaboration between El Mac of Los Angeles and Shamsia Hassani of Kabul, Afghanistan. The 7-meter-wide mural [enamel and acrylic on canvas] is a portrait of Shamsia painted by El Mac in his unique style using spray cans. The design elements depicted by Shamsia are an extension of her graffiti work. The poem, written in Pashto by Shamsia reads: “Birds of no nation / All are captive / Like me / Without voices to sing”. Viet Nam The World Tour, 2017 Ongoing project Location: Paris, France Viet Nam The World Tour, 2017 Viet Nam The World Tour, 2017 Ongoing project Ongoing project Location: Los Angeles, USA Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam TEMPORARY PUBLIC ART GALLERY, 2010 PUBLIC ART This public intervention, initiated with an Art Matters Foundation grant, explores matters concerning public space, public art, privatized commercial space and the politics of censorship behind the regulation of these spaces in Ho Chi Minh City. The aim was to act as an advertising agency, rent a commercial billboard at ground- level and curate it as a public art gallery. Members of The Propeller Group as well as other artists practicing in the local context were asked to submit ideas and images for this public space. As all visual elements in the landscape, from public art to advertisement, are controlled through different censorship bodies, public art in Viet Nam has been limited in the last few decades to marble sculptures in the park and some old propaganda signage attached to various walls throughout different cities. However, the landscape has been shifting from having more propaganda to now having more advertising, while public art remains innocuous, inaccessible, and limited by these censorship bodies, attempted to circumnavigate these limitations, trying to locate a loophole in the system by renting out advertising space to curate artworks in public; challenging notions of public space, advertising, and public art in Viet Nam. Temporary Public Art Gallery, 2010 Public art Temporary Public Art Gallery, 2010 Public art ENEMY’S ENEMY: A MONUMENT TO A MONUMENT, 2009 In this work, an image of a burning monk is meticulously carved into the barrel of a baseball bat, the engulfing flames eating away at its wooden strength. This carefully crafted sculpture refers to the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc on June 11, 1963, bringing attention to the repressive and discriminatory policies against Buddhists by the Catholic Diem regime (which was set up by the American government). Ironically, a memorial erected on the site of this human sacrifice in Ho Chi Minh City, even though under Communism, religion is considered irreconcilable with the desire to transform the social class.
Recommended publications
  • Superflex Keynote Speech: If Value, Then Copy*

    Superflex Keynote Speech: If Value, Then Copy*

    Superflex Keynote Speech: If Value, Then Copy* INTRODUCTION TO SUPERFLEX Good afternoon, I hope that you are enjoying your meal and I thank the waiters and waitresses who are serving us, and the cooks in the back. Good afternoon, I am Anupam Chander. I am Director of the California International Law Center, and I am a law professor here at UC Davis. I am speaking to you on behalf of Mario Biagioli and Madhavi Sunder, my colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and also on behalf of the UC Davis Law Review. I welcome you to a keynote address for our conference titled “Brand New World: Discovering Oneself in the Global Flow.” We are delighted today to welcome Rasmus Nielsen of the internationally renowned artist-group called “Superflex.” Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Superflex consists of Jakob Fenger, Bjørnsterne Christiansen, and Rasmus who have been collaborating together since 1993. It is hard to do justice to the work of Superflex as the range of their work is nothing less than astonishing, from creating a brand of power-drinks for an Amazonian tribe in Brazil to a television series in Vietnam on Dutch Pirates of the seventeenth century who stole a * Transcript of keynote speech by Rasmus Nielsen at the UC Davis Law Review’s Brand New World symposium, UC Davis School of Law, October 4, 2012. 735 736 University of California, Davis [Vol. 47:735 treasure trove of Southeast Asian porcelain. As you can see, even the geographic scope of their work is dazzling. Their work is in collections and exhibitions across the world from Beijing and Tokyo to Europe and California.
  • Dead Heroes and Living Saints: Orthodoxy

    Dead Heroes and Living Saints: Orthodoxy

    Dead Heroes and Living Saints: Orthodoxy, Nationalism, and Militarism in Contemporary Russia and Cyprus By Victoria Fomina Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Vlad Naumescu Professor Dorit Geva CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2019 Budapest, Hungary Statement I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions and no materials previously written and / or published by any other person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Victoria Fomina Budapest, August 16, 2019 CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This dissertation explores commemorative practices in contemporary Russia and Cyprus focusing on the role heroic and martyrical images play in the recent surge of nationalist movements in Orthodox countries. It follows two cases of collective mobilization around martyr figures – the cult of the Russian soldier Evgenii Rodionov beheaded in Chechen captivity in 1996, and two Greek Cypriot protesters, Anastasios Isaak and Solomos Solomou, killed as a result of clashes between Greek and Turkish Cypriot protesters during a 1996 anti- occupation rally. Two decades after the tragic incidents, memorial events organized for Rodionov and Isaak and Solomou continue to attract thousands of people and only seem to grow in scale, turning their cults into a platform for the production and dissemination of competing visions of morality and social order. This dissertation shows how martyr figures are mobilized in Russia and Cyprus to articulate a conservative moral project built around nationalism, militarized patriotism, and Orthodox spirituality.
  • Art and the Crisis of the European Welfare State Addresses Contemporary Art in the Context of Changing European Welfare States

    Art and the Crisis of the European Welfare State Addresses Contemporary Art in the Context of Changing European Welfare States

    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO No Such Thing as Society: Art and the Crisis of the European Welfare State A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Theory and Criticism by Sarah Elsie Lookofsky Committee in charge: Professor Norman Bryson, Co-Chair Professor Lesley Stern, Co-Chair Professor Marcel Hénaff Professor Grant Kester Professor Barbara Kruger 2009 Copyright Sarah Elsie Lookofsky, 2009 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Sarah Elsie Lookofsky is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2009 iii Dedication For my favorite boys: Daniel, David and Shannon iv Table of Contents Signature Page…….....................................................................................................iii Dedication.....................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents..........................................................................................................v Vita...............................................................................................................................vii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………..viii Chapter 1: “And, You Know, There Is No Such Thing as Society.” ....................... 1 1.1 People vs. Population ............................................................................... 2 1.2 Institutional
  • SUPERFLEX Formed in 1993 by Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen

    SUPERFLEX Formed in 1993 by Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen

    SUPERFLEX Formed in 1993 by Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen. The Danish artist group SUPERFLEX has been working since 1993 on a series of projects to do with economic forces, democratic production conditions and self-organisation. With a diverse and complex practice that engages art, design, commerce and economic structures of dependency, the Copenhagenbased artists collective Superflex challenges the role of artists in contemporary society and explore the nature of globalization through ongoing collaborative projects. Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen born 1969 Jakob Fenger born 1968 Rasmus Nielsen born 1969 Work and live in Copenhagen, Denmark & Sweden Education The Royal Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen Solo exhibitions (selected) 2014 The Corrupt Show and The Speculative Machine, The Jumex Foundation, Mexico City, MX Superflex, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen 2013 Mærsk – The Opera, Horsens Art Museum, Horsens, DK 2012 7th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, GB Kuh, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, AT Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests – w. Simon Starling, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, AT Prouvé in Africa / Bent, Pressed, Compressed, Welded, and then Copied, Musée d’Art Moderne, St-Etienne, FR Bankrupt Banks, Peter Blum, New York, US Modern Times Forever, 1301PE Gallery, Los Angeles, US Flooded McDonald’s, The Cube, Taipei, Taiwan 2011 COPY LIGHT – MODERN TIMES FOREVER, Galerie Jeusse Entreprise, Paris, FR Flooded McDonalds, Museum der Westkünste, Alkersum/Föhr, D Foreigners,
  • The Propeller Group the Living Need Light, the Dead Need Music,” E- Flux, September 11, 2015

    The Propeller Group the Living Need Light, the Dead Need Music,” E- Flux, September 11, 2015

    GALERIE QUYNH CONTEMPORARY ART The Propeller Group Phunam, Matt Lucero and Tuan Andrew Nguyen Founded in 2006 Living and working between Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, and Los Angeles, CA, USA PHUNAM Born in 1974 in Saigon, Vietnam 1997 École des Beaux Arts Hanoi, Oil Painting Restoration, Hanoi, Vietnam 1995 Bronze Buddha sculpting and bronze casting, Chiang Mai, Thailand 1988 Stone sculpting, Khmer arts restoration, Kun Ya apprenticeship, Bangkok, Thailand MATT LUCERO Born in 1976 in Upland, CA, USA 2003 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, USA 2000 BFA, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN Born in 1976 in Saigon, Vietnam 2004 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, USA 1999 BFA, Studio Art, with Minor in Digital Arts, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2015 The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, USA The Propeller Group, Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, USA 2013 Lived, Lives, Will Live!, Lombard Freid Gallery, New York, NY, USA 2012 The History of the Future, 10 Chancery Lane, Hong Kong Static Friction, Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Station Friction: Burning Rubber, San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2010 Your Name Here, San Art @ L’Usine, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2007 Requiem for a wall, Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City Level 2, 151/3 Dong Khoi Street District 1 Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam | tel/fax: +84 8 3824 8284 | [email protected] | www.galeriequynh.com GALERIE QUYNH CONTEMPORARY ART
  • 2017-2018 Contemporary Art Program Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco About the Artists

    2017-2018 Contemporary Art Program Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco About the Artists

    2017-2018 CONTEMPORARY ART PROGRAM FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO ABOUT THE ARTISTS DIS The New York-based collective DIS; made up of Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro, works across a wide range of media, most recently transitioning platforms from an online magazine to a video streaming edutainment. The group has become the nucleus of an ever-growing international community of artists, musicians, photographers, writers, and designers. Functioning as curators and commentators, DIS weaves together the content of collaborators with its own work to propose discourse around chosen topics. In 2013, the group established DISimages, a fully operational stock photography agency that enlists artists to produce images available for private and commercial use, and DISown, an ongoing retail platform and laboratory dedicated to testing the current status of the art object. Genre-Nonconforming: The DIS Edutainment Network is DIS’ first major project since curating the 9th Berlin Biennale in 2016. Lynn Hershman Leeson Starting out in installation and interactive performance art during the 1960s, pioneering media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson continues to create work that includes performance, moving image, drawing, collage, text, site-specific interventions, and new media / digital technologies. Her projects signal concerns, ranging from the politics of privacy, and surveillance, to voyeurism, and identity. Hershman Leeson has enjoyed recent solo exhibitions at , Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, and Modern Art Oxford. Her work is in the collections of Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Berkeley Art Museum, Seattle Museum of Art, Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Warsaw.
  • 5 Names You'll Know After the Venice Biennale

    5 Names You'll Know After the Venice Biennale

    5 Names You’ll Know after the Venice Biennale https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-artists-to-watch... P 5 Names You’ll Know after the Venice Biennale ARTSY EDITORIAL MAY 7TH, 2015 1:19 PM Work by Newell Harry; The Propeller Group. Photos by Alex John Beck for Artsy. Certainly one reason many flock to the Venice Biennale is to discover new talent. Sure, the national pavilions beam with the stars of today, and those that receive such an honor are secured a place within art (and often market) history. But what about the young’ns, the underdogs, and the unexpected? When Okwui Enwezor took the curator’s torch for this year’s edition, the swanky-but-serious Nigerian stoked the fires in a welcome way, by including a much more demographically diverse range of practitioners. Enwezor’s headlining exhibition, “All the World’s Futures,” includes heavy doses of artists from Africa, a continent that has fecund and versatile contemporary practices, and which is often largely overlooked—or worse, 5 Names You’ll Know after the Venice Biennale https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-artists-to-watch... exoticized—in the West. But a spotlight on Enwezor’s continental turf isn’t the show’s only compelling attribute. Rather, within moments of stepping into the Arsenale, it becomes apparent that this show is a triumph, more broadly, of the bold-faced and the yet-to-be-discovered. Below, find five artists that make an indelible impact. Newell Harry Photo by Alex John Beck for Artsy. Ever since Jerry Saltz’s 2012 comment that word art is a steady path to commercial success in the art world, legions of young artists have incorporated text into their practices (never mind that the writing has been on the wall for a long time).
  • (Iowa City, Iowa), 1975-06-25

    (Iowa City, Iowa), 1975-06-25

    j "Iowa's alternative ~ newspaper" _V_o_I_.1 _0_8_,_N_o_. _18~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~dne~a~ June 25,1975 Iowa City, Iowa-------------- 52242 -----10' Eyewitnesses say lightning downed plane Survey finds More than 100 perish Iowa hospitals avoid abortions in New York jet crash DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The NEW YORK (AP) - All EII&em Trampot1&Uon WetY BoercI, wu .ad executive director of the Iowa Civil AIrlInes 7f1 jetllDereombw la for llaDcIDI repartI Liberties Union (\cLU) said Tue8day abcQ eytwltiww lIIat tbe pi.­ In I tbUDderttonn CI'IIbed and blamed juIt wultluelt by u.... ' court action may be necessary to compel Ibort of Kennedy airport 'l'IIeIday, killInI many public hospitall to permit abortions. "It'. ceNinIy IIItnItbItII dill wID be more thaD 101 peI'IOnI aboard. eonaldered In the ItmItiptlon." be The director, Claudia Morrilley, said a Witb 111 p.IHI...... and .... ern majority of public hospitallin Iowa do not membel'l lboIrd, the ~wu OIl I perronn abortions despite federal court ~ ' 1I1d at IeIIt "'" ptWiu CI'IIIIIa ....top rn,t& from New . In tbe I... were attrtbutIId to ~, decisions that they must. c.. of them I PIn AmerbIIl ..... at She said this was diaclOlleCl by an eight· ':'I~ :1tItt!'.~ Elkton, Md .• IDd the adler I TWA IIrIIaw month ICLU survey, known as the before It tore tbrouIb tine ill Rome. Reproductive Freedom Project, of the Ipproac:b Ilibt IIlInddona and plowed ItIto "1.4btmnI 'bit the pIane." dIdared IVluability of abortion and sterilization III area of paJtiandnor1b of tile Upon. ~ewlinew hoi Mann, I N.-.a Cult operatlOllll In Iowa. M It akIdded alone tile pound.
  • Press Contact: Natalie Thayer Communications Coordinator 713.743.0296 Nhthayer@Uh.Edu

    Press Contact: Natalie Thayer Communications Coordinator 713.743.0296 [email protected]

    Press Contact: Natalie Thayer Communications Coordinator 713.743.0296 [email protected] Blaffer Art Museum Presents First Major Exhibition of The Propeller Group The Propeller Group Merges Conceptual Art with Popular Media HOUSTON - The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is proud to present the first major institutional exhibition by The Propeller Group, a Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles-based art collective. The exhibition kicks off with an opening reception on Friday, June 2 from 7 – 9 p.m. and will be on view through September 30, 2017. The Propeller Group, led by founders Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phu Nam Thuc Ha and Matt Lucero, is dedicated to elevating the Vietnamese voice on the international scene. With backgrounds in visual art, film and video, The Propeller Group operates as both an artist collective and an advertisement company named TPG. Through installation, video and sculpture, The Propeller Group has developed an innovative model that merges collaborative, conceptual art practices — partially steeped in the politically inflected artwork of the 1990s — with the forms and methods of popular media today. Blurring the boundaries between fine art and mainstream media production, The Propeller Group makes large-scale collaborative projects in new media, from videos to web-based applications. They apply systems-hacking tactics to their projects, adopting strategies from advertising and marketing, as well as forms of creation and display that usually take place in galleries and museums. Their ambitious projects are frequently anchored in Vietnam’s history or its current dynamics as a growing capitalist market, yet their work extends to address global phenomena, including international commerce, the tools of war and street culture.
  • Art and Globalisation

    Art and Globalisation

    Ritz Wu April 2013 The installation as avatar: Curating political works of virtual reality INTRODUCTION The matter that forms the world of 3D virtual reality (VR) is as vivid as the center of a black hole. Looking into the depths of CGI-composite texture, one finds it a cohesive, infinite void, terrifyingly sensual, empty and still. When the void assumes the slick, CGI-rendered appearance of the urban landscape, taking on the structure of a simulated social environment, it transforms into a web of subterranean personal and psychological desire. Every composite object, every face, action and word is the fulfillment of a lack. Skins are shed, cities and warzones are built - the depths of this insatiable mouth are able to bear the possible horrors of any real or imagined terrain. Projects such as Superflex’s “Karlskrona2” (1999), Wafaa Bilal’s “Virtual Jihadi” (2008), and Cao Fei’s RMB City (2009) have exploited these very properties in their use of the format of 3D interactive games as a tool of political critique. While without intervention, it is true that “media [...] are mainly an environment whose effects largely differ and disregard political contents and conscious intentions”,1 these artists’ projects spotlight the consumptive, neutralized universe of VR as a behemoth of globalization, summoning it as a mirror to the raw, inescapable realities of systematic violence, war, or urban injustice. Reflexive of the medium’s own avowed artificiality and limitations, they exploit the dynamics of immersion, alienation, and digitalization inherent in VR games in order to invite the possibility (or impossibility) of public participation and reflection on local and individual histories, conflicts, and desires.
  • Winning Projects

    Winning Projects

    Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2016 WINNING PROJECTS Superkilen Copenhagen, Denmark Architect: BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, Superflex, Topotek 1 Client: Copenhagen Municipality Project description Superkilen is a kilometre-long urban park located in Nørrebro, a diverse and socially challenged neighbourhood of Copenhagen. Designed by architects BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, artists Superflex and landscape architects TOPOTEK 1 in collaboration with the local – predominantly Muslim – community, the park takes the historical themes of the universal garden and the amusement park and translates them into a contemporary urban setting. With a healthy dose of irreverence, it sheds light on the positive dimensions of cultural diversity and invites people – young and old – to play. Superkilen is part of a larger urban renewal plan developed as a partnership between the Municipality of Copenhagen and the private philanthropic association RealDania. Its name refers to the physical constraints of the site, a narrow ‘wedge’ (kilen) extending between two important traffic arteries. The park’s pedestrian paths and cycle routes provide better connections between these two roads, while its public lighting creates a greater sense of security – an important consideration in an area historically blighted by crime. Opening up previously hard-to- reach neighbourhoods to the west and east, Superkilen plugs the area back into the infrastructure of the city as a whole. Colour plays a significant role in the park, which is formally divided into three distinct zones organised around different programmes – Red Square (market/culture/sport), Black Market http://www.akdn.org/architecture (urban living room), Green Park (sport/play). Of these, the most visually striking is the Black Market, inspired, according to the architects, by the Lars von Trier film Dogville (2003), which uses a minimal stage-like set with white lines on black ground.
  • The 20 Most Influential Young Curators in the United States

    The 20 Most Influential Young Curators in the United States

    Search… ARTISTS ARTWORKS SHOWS GALLERIES MUSEUMS FAIRS AUCTIONS MAGAZINELOG MOREIN SIGN UP The 20 Most Influential Young Curators in the United States ARTSY EDITORIAL BY ALEXXA GOTTHARDT OCT 25TH, 2016 9:46 PM The role that curators play, like the art they care for, is constantly evolving. As culture shifts, moving with changes in the social and political landscape or technological innovations, so does the art being produced. And it is a curator’s job to reflect those developments, uncover overlooked histories, and bring to light the creative work that resonates with our present moment. Here, we gather 20 curators across the U.S. who are not only revealing the conditions and conversations driving artmaking now, but also shaping the direction that art and culture will take in the future—and ensuring the public has access to a broad array of artistic voices. It is no coincidence that this list is relatively diverse and overwhelmingly female. As culture gradually overturns its male- dominated, Eurocentric past, it’s the curators who are representing expansive, multifarious points of view that are creating the most relevant and influential exhibitions. Amanda Hunt POSITION Associate Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York LOCATION New York RECENT CAREER HIGHLIGHT “inHarlem: Kevin Beasley, Simone Leigh, Kori Newkirk, Rudy Shepherd,” Studio Museum in Harlem in partnership with Morningside Park, Marcus Garvey Park, St. Nicholas Park, and Jackie Robinson Park FAVORITE SHOW SEEN LATELY “Cameron Rowland: 91020000,” Artists Space, New York Photo by Sharon Suh. After several years at the alternative art space LAXART, where she helped produce both the “Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival” and “Made in L.A.