AKEEM SMITH — UNBOUND: PERFORMANCE AS RUPTURE

In contrast to Peggy Phelan’s definition of performance as a live art characterized by its immediate disappearance, UNBOUND centers the use of the camera and its apparatus to record and direct the performance itself. By willfully conflating the presence of performance and the virtuality of the image, the artists question a fundamental paradox—or representational gap—between the performing subject, whose complex identity can never be depicted fully, and the camera as a violent tool that tries to capture, contain, and classify them. Many of these works expose and negate the colonial gaze perpetuated by the camera, while simultaneously utilizing time-based technologies, in order to create otherwise impossible connections across spaces and temporalities. In addition to performance documentation and performance-for-the-camera, the exhibited artworks offer investigations into contemporary image economies that draw attention to how bodies move through or evade physical and digital spaces.

Performance introduced a rupture in the Western understanding of art in the mid-twentieth century by obscuring the distinction between art object, artist, and action. This unbinding of art through the body and vice versa drives the diverse approaches of the works on view. Around the same time, the emergence of video technology also marked a decisive shift in the way we record, playback, edit, and present moving images—a shift that connects early experiments in video to our contemporary usage of images in social media and beyond. Taking these histories into account, historical works by Eleanor Antin, peter campus, VALIE EXPORT, Sanja Iveković, Ulysses Jenkins, Joan Jonas, Senga Nengudi, Lutz Mommartz, Howardena Pindell, Pope.L, and Katharina Sieverding will speak to those of a younger generation, including Panteha Abareshi, Ufuoma Essi, Shuruq Harb, Tarek Lakhrissi, mandla & Graham Clayton-Chance, Lydia Ourahmane, Sondra Perry, Akeem Smith, and P. Staff, among others.

UNBOUND: PERFORMANCE AS RUPTURE will be accompanied by a publication comprising an introduction and short texts about each artwork in relation to the themes of the exhibition (complimentary upon admission). There will also be a public program of talks and screenings, and a podcast to expand on the exhibition’s ideas and absences.

Curator: Lisa Long
Assistant Curator: Line Ajan