Martine Syms
Total
Exhibition from 16 Oct 2024 to 09 Feb 2025
1 year and 8 months ago
Composed of reproductions of elements from her Los Angeles studio — from the façade of the building to her office — this hybrid space bridges the public and private spheres, the seen and the inaccessible, the intimate and the collective, telling a certain story of our culture and the places that make it. The artist presents a kaleidoscopic experience in which existential questions are embodied in the works, which are then turned into editions available for sale. Through the transformation of the artist’s studio into a retail space turned film set, the public experiences a project invested in the“theater of the everyday”, the roles we play in it, and the mechanisms that control them.
Total deals with the generalization of surveillance and the permanent capture of our image as powerful dynamics in the construction of identities. What if we were all actors in a film in perpetual production? What if “reality” was written by images?
Between intimate references, historical archives, cultural representations of blackness, feminist history, and invocations of spirituality, Total refracts the mechanisms of legibility. A meditation on consumption as performance, but also on the performance of consumption, the exhibition proposes that we consider the things we desire as extensions of ourselves and our culture, while at the same time questioning the origins of these very desires.
Curator: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
With Libération, M Le Monde Magazine, MAD, Views, Konbini, The New York Times
Image credit: Exhibition view of Martine Syms' exhibition Total at Lafayette Anticipations © Aurélien Mole
During the exhibition
Claudia Rankine in conversation with Martine Syms
An exceptional encounter between poet and essayist Claudia Rankine and Martine Syms about her exhibition Total.
Monday 21 Oct at 7pm
Zsela
American singer-songwriter Zsela assembles soundscapes filled with introspection.
Wednesday 13 Nov at 8pm
Martine Syms, The African Desperate (2022)
Set against the lush backdrop of late summer, Palace navigates the pitfalls of success and the flaws of the art world.
Monday 02 Dec at 7pm
Performing in the surveilled totality, André Lepecki
Ambient and Circumstances – performing in the surveilled totality.
Monday 20 Jan at 7pm
Using a combination of video, installation and performance, often interwoven with explorations into technique and narrative, Martine Syms examines representations of blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions.
Syms’s research-based practice frequently references and incorporates theoretical models concerning performed or imposed identities, the power of the gesture, and embedded assumptions concerning gender and racial inequalities.
Syms has exhibited internationally with solo exhibition including Total, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2024); Present Goo, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Ugly Plymouths, Carré d'Art - Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nimes (2023); SHE MAD Sl:E4, MCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2022); Grio College, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson (2022); She Mad: Season One, Bergen Kunsthall (2021); Neural Swamp, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2022).
Group exhibitions include Coming Soon, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2024); After Laughter Comes Tears, MUDAM The Contemporary Art Museum, Luxembourg (2023); Stranger in the Village, Racism in the Mirror by James Baldwin, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (2023); Kunsthal Charlottenborg Biennale, Copenhague (2023); Signals: How Video Transformed the World, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023) et Mis/ Communication: Language and Power in Contemporary Art, SUNY Fredonia, New York (2023).
In 2022, Syms released her widely acclaimed feature-film, The African Desperate. Martine Syms has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2023) ; United States Artists Fellowship (2020) and the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media (2020).
She has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues.
Martine Syms obtained a MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (NY) (2017) and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL) (2007).
