BODY SNATCHERS
Curated by Raul Zamudio
Identity today is anything but monolithic. Post-Black and
Post-Latin
American, for example, were concepts intrinsic to exhibitions
at the start of the millennium. Titled Freestyle
(2000) and Ultra-Baroque (2000),
respectively, these exhibitions proposed that any demographic or constituency
is much too heterogeneous and nuanced to be adequately represented by the
singularity of a totalizing narrative with its subtext of universality. For
there are many factors that come into play that resist essentialist
categorization making the notion of a Latin American aesthetic as nothing more
than generalization. The variegated geo-cultural differences between Bolivians and
Argentinians, for instance, necessitate a framing of subjectivity as being shaped
as much by class, gender, and sexual orientation as by nationality.
But there is also less affirmative notion of identity in
which it is unconsciously constructed and manipulated from without. The Marxian
commodity fetish, by which a product is de-sublimated from want to a need,
creates the ideal consumer perpetually seeking that external material object to
fulfill the human existential void. Other philosophers have even described
addictions, religion or the desire for membership to a particular class or
political party, as false needs created in individuals subsequently appearing
as if they were ghosts in a machine or in regards to the current exhibition, as
having their “bodies snatched.”
Consisting of painting, sculpture, photography, video,
installation and
works-on-paper, BODY
SNATCHERS is an exhibition that focuses on the
mutability of identity as well as the constructs by which
agency is
given form including the material and immaterial factors
listed above. Although the works in BODY
SNATHCERS are highly individuated in form and concept, they coalesce around
the instability of a contemporary self that is protean and configured through
myriad contexts from both within and without, both consciously and
unconsciously.
Artists include:
Isaac Aden
Oreet Ashery
Shelly Bahl
Domingo Sanchez Blanco
Martin Durazo
Shahram Entekhabi
Joaquin Segura
Juan Carlos Granados
Sangwoo Koh
Jessica “La Negra” Lopez
Damian Ontiveros
Kiki Seror
Kasper Sonne
Stanikas
Mookie Tenembaum
Michael Tong
Wojtek Ulrich
Rubern Verdu
Abdul Vas
Eric Yahnker
More installation shots:
http://whiteboxnyc.org/exhibit/36/
http://whiteboxnyc.org/exhibit/36/
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