Wearing Masks: The Performance of Identity in Contemporary Art скачать в хорошем качестве

Wearing Masks: The Performance of Identity in Contemporary Art

Using masks as both props and metaphors, Gillian Wearing’s photographs, videos, and installations explore the performance of identity, an act that we all participate in on a quotidian basis as a means to various ends. As RuPaul famously stated, “We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.” Some of us adopt specific affects, mannerisms, or styles of dress to authentically signal to the outside world how we feel within. For others, assimilation is a vital act of self-preservation. Often the identities we present will shift to accommodate the social or physical spaces that we occupy. More nefariously, as with the infamous Anna Delvey, and “Tinder Swindler” Simon Leviev, the performance can be a manipulative con, “faking it until you make it.” In our present landscape saturated by social media, everyone has the opportunity to present themselves as a finely curated brand. On the occasion of the exhibition "Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks," the Guggenheim will gather a virtual panel of artists to discuss how they each explore the central theme of identity performance within their creative practices. Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, will provide an introductory presentation contextualizing the conversation within Wearing’s practice. The panelists will include Farah Al Qasimi, Malik Gaines, and Colette Lumiere. The program is organized and moderated by Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva, Andrew W. Mellon Gender and LGBTQ+ History Fellow at the Center for Women’s History, New-York Historical Society Museum and Library. The program is part of the Elaine Terner Cooper Education Fund Conversations with Contemporary Artists series. About the speakers Farah Al Qasimi is an artist based in Brooklyn and Dubai, who works in photography, video, and performance. She teaches at Bard College in New York. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Public Art Fund, New York; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. Malik Gaines is an artist, writer, and composer based in New York. He has collaborated for two decades with Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade as the performance group My Barbarian, presenting their work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions, galleries and performances spaces. A twenty-year survey of their work was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2021. Gaines is co-artistic director of The Industry, an experimental opera company in Los Angeles. He is the author of many articles and essays about art and performance and the book "Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left" (NYU Press, 2017), and is currently associate professor of performance studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Colette Lumiere is a pioneering artist who first became recognized for her enigmatic street art, and soon after her elaborate living tableaux and environments. Her vast enduring body of work has innovated and defied the categories of installation, performance, photography, and painting from the early 1970s through the present. Widely known as Colette, she began using a series of personas in 1978 to create her art, including Justine (for the Reverse Pop Series, 1978–83), Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes (1984–86), Countess Reichenbach (1986–91), the House of Olympia (1991–2001), and Lumiere (2001– ). Colette’s artwork is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Brooklyn Museum; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kuntsmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany; and Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, among others. The exhibition "Notes on Baroque Living: Colette and Her Living Environment, 1972–1983," featured seminal works from the first decade of her ever-evolving career, was on view at Company Gallery, New York, earlier this year. Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York–based writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation titled “Fragments: Art, AIDS, and Lesbian Identity in the United States.” Soboleva has curated exhibitions at Candice Madey Gallery, La MaMA Galleria, and Assembly Room, all in New York. Her writings have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, art-agenda, and various exhibition catalogues. She was the 2020–2021 Marica and Jan Vilcek Curatorial Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, where she assisted in organizing the "Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks" exhibition. She is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and LGBTQ+ History at the New-York Historical Society.