View of the 81st Whitney Biennial
Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Written by Huang Haoli
Edited by Yang Yao
The 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial 2024 is titled "Even Better than The Real Thing" and is co-organized by curators Chrissie Iles, Meg Onli, Min Sun Jeon, and Beatriz Cifuentes. The exhibition features a total of 69 works by 69 artists and two art groups, including Jes Fan, Yasmine Anlan Huang, Li Shuang and Simon Liu.
"Even better than real" seems to carry with it a certain expectation of the future, in which the multiplicity of "reality" is reflected. "Better than real" may be the predicament of reality itself hidden in contemporary society, or it may be that the existing conditions of reality are not enough to realize the imaginary future. Regardless of the presupposition of the title, the perception of the real world and the new challenges brought by the AI era will become the observation points that this exhibition brings to the public.
Raqs媒体小组，“The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time Cone”, 影像静帧，2023年，图片由艺术家提供 Raqs Media Collective
黄安澜，《Her Love is a Bleeding Tank》，影像静帧，2020年
Image courtesy of the artist Yasmine Anlan Huang
The center turns to the edge to establish a new relational aesthetic
As a politically effective art biennial, the Whitney Biennial has always served as "the arbiter of the cultural value of contemporary American art", and the theme and connotation of each edition of its works involve a response to the current social situation and a prediction of the future direction of contemporary art. The Whitney Biennial not only focuses on artistic concepts, art forms, and artistic aesthetics itself, but also looks at issues such as race, marginalization, gender, class, and system, and the "identity politics" defined by the new social movement[1] provides a new context and perspective for historical exhibitions. Compared with other global biennials, the main task of the Whitney Biennial is not only to lead the trend of American contemporary art with avant-garde concepts and cutting-edge forms, but more importantly, to present the values and ideologies of the United States itself, and to establish its own position through political metaphors in artworks.
Diane Severin Nguyen, In Her Time (Iris Edition), still frame, 2022-2023, image courtesy of Diane Severin Nguyen
Twenty-eight percent of the artists participating in the Biennale are from outside the United States, and the emphasis on diversity of identities has led to a more democratic and fair-minded political statement than the previous focus on American artists. In "Even Better Than True", the emphasis on political identity also gradually transitions to a focus on identity image, as well as in countries that emphasize universal citizenship, help for the disadvantaged and attention to sexual minorities, marginalized groups. Facing authoritarianism, the climate crisis, refugees moving ...... The curators are aware that at a time when the dialogue on the colonial border is making progress, right-wing forces are on the rise; In the face of the achievements of women's liberation, the black movement, and the gay liberation in history, it is difficult to completely get rid of the essentialism of a certain class. In the face of multiple dilemmas in reality, "identity politics" is gradually turning to "identity image", which is changing from a single self to a multiple self, making the identity of each individual today pluralistic, fluid and indefinable. At this moment, the image seems to have more power and possibility than reality, which can also be used as a response to the theme of the exhibition.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, 《Unziwoslal Wasicuta》,2021年
在第81届惠特尼双年展现场 Cannupa Hanska Luger.
Under the framework of "even better than the real thing", the curatorial team proposes an alternative form of creation and forms an "archipelago critical thinking" as a way of thinking, that is, in the new relational aesthetic structure that it tries to establish, it grasps every possibility through the discrete characteristics of the archipelago, forming a touch of space, a visual reset and an overlap of subjects, and finally shows a humanistic and public concern. In contrast to the logic of the "continent", Martinique poet, novelist, and postcolonial scholar Edouard Glissant proposed the 21st-century archipelago, "in contrast to the overarching model of global power, the archipelago proposes a rhizome structure of relations, with intertwined connectivity, untranslatability, and interdependence." ”[2]
P. Staff, Afferent Nerve and Crossing the Bad World, 2023, installation view at Kunsthalle Basel, Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Basel, photo by Philipp Hönger
Artist P. Screw Staff's installations Afferent Nelves and A Travers Le Mal capture the visual nerve with a striking yellow tension that is both immersive and perspectiveal, sound and tearing. In the acidic yellow lighting, the power grid overhead, the faint sound of electricity, and a dark black self-portrait of the artist in the distance, in which the artist covers his face with his hand, seems to represent the painful dispersion and the unknown identity, as a "specific transgender model", the aesthetic relationship established by this work is no longer the uniqueness of the audience's aesthetic acceptance, but opens an attempt to enter the space and change the narrative, breaking through the hidden identity uniqueness, and remobilizing the relationship between the nerve center and self-imagination.
Chanelle Tyson, 2023
Chanelle Tyson's video work "Artificial" delves into our society's growing reliance on artificial intelligence, imagining how AI devices can understand the human condition by eavesdropping on conversations and collecting other readily available digital data. It is worth noting that in addition to generating visual landscapes and giving things functions, the role of technology in people's emotional memory and daily life also refers to people's emotional dependence on technology, information security, and the potentially dangerous relationship between the three.
祖拉·乌尔楚德,《Nuudelch Khand'laga'》(游牧态度), 影像静帧,2021年 Zulaa Urchuud
Mongolian director Zulaa Urchuud's black-and-white film Nuudelch Khand'laga' (Nomadic Attitude) depicts Ulaanbaatar's urbanization and sets it in the early twentieth century, showing nomads' attachment to the land not only as a nostalgia, but also as the basis for their own survival based on the individual economy. This video work establishes an exploration of the relationship between the nation and the individual, and the "nomad" and "attitude" (attitude) in a non-linear narrative "castrate" a kind of poetic nature of Mongolian urbanization to the steppe pastures, for this era, attitude seems to evoke the power of action in addition to the expression of position. In the map of the earth, the relationship between the geological ecosystem and the human body is a calibration of the desire for capital and dataism, which plays a feedback role when there is a mutation on either side.
In the different relationships shown in these three works, there is an interweaving of internal space and external reality, whether it is the urbanization of natural pastures or the technologization of artificial intelligence, the relative penetration rate of the boundaries outside the mainstream and the configuration of global geographical locations are particularly important at this moment. A large number of artists in the exhibition are also concerned with the dispersion of individual identities, the fear of pandemics, the trauma of life, the unrest of the times, and the political, ecological and other tensions. These relationships will constitute a new relational aesthetic that appears overlapping, intertwined, fragmented, and echoing each other in this era.
Unleash the imagination in a fractured history
In the works and exhibition halls, we can experience the dislocation of body and space, the flow of narrative structure and thematic intention, and the constantly reconstructed and flowing identity experience emphasized by the curator, so whether it is the object of the work or the person as the audience, its subjectivity is being dissolved, and the identity changes with different scenes. Similarly, when contemplating the virtual reality of AI, there are also works that revisit the culture wars and their frenetic political moments in the 90s of the 20th century. In the viewing of anti-temporal narratives, the logic of traditional viewing has become ineffective, and the exhibition itself takes the form of a rhizome-like archipelago, and perhaps the ruptured historical narrative is more authentic when it comes to the historical outcomes of racism, regime abuse, colonialism, and neoliberalism.
Kiyan Williams' outdoor sculpture Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master's House, a clay building with an American flag erected behind it, is based on the north façade of the White House, and the artist uses clay as a metaphor for the weak state of the political foundation. The erosion of soil and matter points to the criticism of the irrational system on the earth, and the evolution of ruins serves as a witness to history and a warning of the consequences.
Dara Nasser, The River Adonis, 2023, commissioned by the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, with support from the Graham Foundation and Maria Sukka, image courtesy of Dala Nasser
In a country like Lebanon, which is full of war, violence and conflict, how does a temple survive to this day? This is translated into patterns on wooden columns in Dala Nasser's Adonis River, and sheets dyed with iron-laden clay from the Abraham River in Mount Lebanon, north of Beirut. In her work, she traces the myth of Adonis on Sumerian tablets, which also influenced the narrative of Greek mythology throughout the long history of ancient Sumerian and Assyrian cultures. Beneath the temple, humanity shares a thirst for life and a hope for peace, but in the rupture between the harsh reality and the longing for the future, the release of imagination may be the only solace in the darkest moments.
Diné Bikéyah's work faces the Hudson River, which flows quietly outside the window, and in the neon-lit poems, the viewer is able to feel the content of each text that reverberates the heart. "We Must Stop Imagining Armageddon/Genocide + We Must Imagine Liberation" stems from the artist's reflection on the events of the Indigenous Resistance, and Bikoya emphasizes that people should avoid falling into the "romanticized addiction to the end of the world" rooted in European and Western contexts, and should dissolve romanticized words and imaginations. A new step towards the act of writing to defend one's rights and record one's own story.
A New "Imagined Community"
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio's Paloma Blanca Deja Volar (White Doves Let Us Fly) is a huge three-dimensional installation made of amber, in which the material, the filler, the smell of amber and the changes in the spatial environment, temperature and dryness constitute a dynamic expression of the static installation. The piece is made primarily of tree pober, which moves over time in response to changes in ambient light and heat. Amber is used because it has the function of delivering nutrients to the tree and healing its own wounds. The work documents the process of processing, transporting, and crafting amber by white workers in Los Angeles and New York, exploring the complex relationship between privilege and solidarity. More importantly, this healing of the wound and the metaphor of the stitching of the fractured history and the individual memory of the era are also part of the imaginary community.
李爽，《以太》[ ? THER (Poor Objects)]，影像静帧，2021年，图片由Peres Projects提供 ShuangLi
The exhibition's focus on marginalized groups also involves artistic concern, with Constantina Zavitsanos' two installations, All the time and Call to Post, being combined in the same dark space, filled with blue and purple light, with text appearing on a projection and a person crawling on the slope who can hear modulated infrasound reverberations in the space. The content of the broadcast is the words on the letter, which aims to unite another community that is united by disability.
A more reflective and critical work is Li Shuang's "Ether (Poor Objects)", in which the artist takes human subjectivity and the social reality under the impact of the Internet age as the starting point, and represents the truth of this era in digital images. Under the interweaving of technology, biopolitics and desire, how do people face the inherent contradiction between the virtual world and the real society? CDs, imitation game consoles, and online videos that exist in childhood memories are transformed into fantastical patterns in images after being converted into computer data. Here, the "things of poverty" symbolize the preciousness of innocence and pleasure in the era of material abundance in the past, and when the digital age arrives and everything becomes readily available, what is truly poor is no longer material, but the character of the soul and the pursuit of the spirit.
He Ziyan, "CDOSEA", still frame, 2017–present, courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery TzuNyen Ho
In today's society, we need to redefine the "social imagination", as the Western postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha has argued: "In these communities, despite a shared history of dispossession and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings, and priorities may not always be cooperative and dialogic, but may be antagonistic, conflictual, or even incomparable." [3] Therefore, for the current reality, the Biennale's artworks should admittedly face its conflict, confrontation and irreconcilability at a certain historical moment of rupture, which is precisely the manifestation of the real state and the driving force for its development.
In William Bogard's description of "controlling society", AI has revolutionized people's real life and the media world, and "authenticity" is threatened; At the same time, powerful people in society still use "authenticity" as a rhetoric to perpetuate transphobia and limit bodily autonomy. So "once the database collects information about our shopping habits, leisure habits, reading habits, communication habits, etc., then you become separated." Every aspect of our lives is transformed into information, data, samples. ”[4]
In the face of the sample form of data transformation, perhaps it is true that refugees, indigenous peoples, and LGBTI people who are hidden on the margins of society unite the voices of different indigenous communities in the United States and abroad to create a voice with collective resistance. The dispersion of individual identities, the fear of pandemics, the trauma of life, the uneasiness of the times, as well as the political crisis, the ecological crisis and some kind of tension are real; Those rhizome-like archipelago effects are real when it comes to historical statements about racism, regime abuse, colonialism, and neoliberalism.
[1] J. Weeks,“The Value of Difference”,in lderrtity: Couamurrit, Culture, Difference, ed. by Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart,1990),p.88.
[2] Chrissie Iles,“Reactive Matter: The politics of archipelagic space”,in Whitney Biennial Book of Drawings, 2024.
[3] Homi K. Bhabha,The Location of Culture (London: Rout ledge,1992).
[4] William Bogard, “Deleuze and Machines”,in Deleuze and New Technolog, ed.by Mark Poster and David Savat(Edinburgh: Edinbrugh University Press，2009), p.22-23.
[5] Chrissie Iles,“Reactive Matter: The politics of archipelagic space”,in Whitney Biennial Book of Drawings, 2024.
81st Whitney Biennial
"Even better than the real thing"
2024 WHITNEY BIENNIAL
"Even Better than The Real Thing"
Whitney Museum of American Art
Until August 11
(Article from Art News Chinese Edition)
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