WHITNEY BIENNAL: QUIET AS IT’S KEPT
APRIL 06 – SEPTEMBER 05, 2022
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK
PRESS RELEASE
WHITNEY BIENNAL: QUIET AS IT’S KEPT
APRIL 06 – SEPTEMBER 05, 2022
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK
Kandis Williams based the structure of her video Death of A on Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman. Composed of two acts and a requiem, Miller’s tragedy follows Willy Loman, the titular salesman in a morality play about the so-called American Dream and the dissatisfactions of capitalism. Instead of simply using Miller’s language, Williams collaged a script that also includes texts by Albert Einstein, Saidiya Hartman, Yvonne Rainer, and others. A single actor performs passages from the script as imagery from pop, political, and journalistic sources appears. Williams’s Loman character appears as both actor and dancer, accentuating the emphasis placed on the monologue and solo in theater and dance, respectively. She has reflected, “the work reconfigures the historical record to reflect the unnamable narratives of the psyche, emphasizing the Black body as a site of experience at the same time that it is coopted as a politicized symbol by the spectator.”
The Whitney Biennial has surveyed the landscape of American art, reflecting and shaping the cultural conversation, since 1932. The eightieth edition of the landmark exhibition is co-curated by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Titled Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of sixty-three artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities, and possibilities of the American experience today.