art.wikisort.org - Artist

Martine Syms (born 1988) is an American artist based in Los Angeles who works in publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her work focuses on identity and the portrayal of the self in relation to themes such as feminism and black culture.[1] This is often explored through humour and social commentary.[1] Syms coined the term "conceptual entrepreneur" in 2007 to characterize her practice.[2]

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Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Born	1988 Los Angeles
Nationality	American
Education	Bard College, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Known for	artist, critic, publisher
Website	www.martinesy.ms

Early life

Martine Syms was born in Los Angeles in 1988. She was raised with three siblings in the Altadena suburb of Los Angeles.[3] She was home-schooled by her parents from age 7 through 12,[4] and knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist. When discussing home-schooling, Syms comments: '“The area I grew up in didn’t have the best public schools and it was hard to get all of us into the same private school – for a lot of racist reasons from what it sounds like.”'[5] Syms' mother was interested in art and writing, and her father was an amateur photographer. She attended a pre-college program called CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts) at CalArts.

In 2007 Syms received a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[6] She obtained a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2017.

Career

From 2007–2012 Syms co-directed Golden Age, an artist-run space in Chicago.[7]

In 2015 Syms was included in the New Museum Triennial Surround Audience.[8] In the same year her video Notes on Gesture was exhibited at Bridget Donahue Gallery in New York City and the Machine Project in Los Angeles. It explores the role of seemingly insignificant bodily gestures in the creation of identity.[9]

Syms worked with Willo Perron and Associates to help write Kanye West's speech at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards where he announced his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential Election.[10]

Syms presented the performance Misdirected Kiss at the Storm King Art Center in New York's Hudson Valley and the Broad Museum in Los Angeles in 2016. The work takes its title from the 1904 film The Misdirected Kiss. At times resembling a TED talk, the work picks apart issues of language and representation.[11][12] In the same year her work was also displayed in a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London titled Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble.[13] Included in this exhibition, was the Syms' video series Lessons.[13]

In 2017 Syms showcased her work in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show was titled Projects 106: Martine Syms which centered around a feature-length film, Incense, Sweaters & Ice.[14] She was also shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2017.[15] Syms is the recipient of the 2017 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant.[16] Syms joined the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts in September 2018.[17] In the same year she won the Graham Foundation Fellowship for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.[18] She also received a Future Fields Commission in time-based media from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.[19]

Syms is the founder of Dominica Publishing, an artists' press dedicated to exploring black identity in contemporary art and visual culture.[7][20]

Conceptual Entrepreneur

The broad idea of the artist as an agent seeking financial self-determination runs throughout modern and contemporary art, most notably in works by Marcel Duchamp and Marcel Broodthaers but also Piero Manzoni, David Hammons, and Joe Scanlan. The idea was given its most explicit sanction in a text by Scanlan titled People in Trade, in which he outlines Conceptual Art's business potential:

"In the end, and quite ironically, so-called difficult artists like [Agnes] Martin and [David] Hammons have turned out to be much better economic models than their more celebrated counterparts could ever be. Their arcane interests, unique skills and often restrained production methods epitomize such concepts as personal branding, value adding, and just-in-time production philosophies, state of the art business innovations that they and other artists have never gotten credit for. Until now. The avant garde lives! Not because its more meaningful or radical than any other activity, but because it fills a legitimate market niche."[21]

Syms' self-identified title sustains one of her main ideas: self-determination through a sustainable institution, which stems from her interest in independent music and black-owned businesses.[22][23] Her artwork has been exhibited and screened at venues including Human Resources, Bridget Donahue Gallery, the New Museum, Kunsthalle Bern, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Index Stockholm, MOCA Los Angeles, and MCA Chicago.[24][25] Syms teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.[17]

Work

Syms work often explores contemporary black identity, queer theory, and the power of language through video, performance, writing, and other media.[26] She typically includes contemporary media such as found footage in her work to express these themes.[27] Footage is important to Syms as she explains that 'video is a concise medium for transmitting a lot of information'.[28] She describes herself as a 'hoarder of "orphaned media"'.[5] For example, devices such as smartphones take the role of tools for constructing identity.[29] Syms claims that although she does not use social media herself, she enjoys exploring its purpose in self-constructed identities.[10] When creating her work, one approach often taken by Syms is to use spaces such as galleries to create a collage of multi-media.[29] She also incorporates a range of technical skills such as coding in which she is largely self taught in addition to taking classes at the Armoury Center for The Arts in Los Angeles.[10] Syms also draws inspiration from satire, using parody and sarcasm to express messages in her art.[5] She describes her working style as being led by the project and adapting her art throughout the creation process.[28]

Publications

Syms published Implications and Distinctions in 2011,[30] an exploration of the performance of black identity in contemporary cinema, as part of the Future Plan and Program project created by Steffani Jemison.[31]

Syms published The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto through Rhizome in 2013.[32] In her manifesto Syms calls for black diasporic artistic producers to create culture that focuses on a more realistic future on earth. Syms writes:

"The imaginative challenge that awaits any Mundane Afrofuturist author who accepts that this is it: Earth is all we have. What will we do with it? The chastening but hopefully enlivening effect of imagining a world without fantasy bolt-holes: no portals to the Egyptian kingdoms, no deep dives to Drexciya, no flying Africans to whisk us off to the Promised Land...The understanding that our "twoness" is inherently contemporary, even futuristic. DuBois asks how it feels to be a problem. Ol’ Dirty Bastard says "If I got a problem, a problem's got a problem 'til it’s gone."[33]

Syms released Most Days in 2014 which consisted of a table read of her screenplay about what an average day looks like for a young black woman in 2050 Los Angeles. The score for the album was composed by Neal Reinalda.[34]

Personal

Syms is a fan of football and plays in Midfield for Sativa Football Club.[35]

Collections, Lectures and Exhibitions

Public Collections[36]

• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
• Carré d'Art, Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes, France
• Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, New York NY, USA
• Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA, USA
• JFABC Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, Chicago IL, USA
• Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Chicago IL, USA
• KADIST, Paris and San Francisco CA, USA
• LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA, USA
• Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, England
• MCA Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
• MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, USA
• MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York NY, USA
• Museum of Modern Art Library, New York  NY, USA
• Perez Art Museum, Miami FL, USA
• San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio TX, USA
• Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal
• Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY, USA
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN, USA
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY, USA

Lectures and Conferences[36]

• William Greaves: Psychodrama, Interruption, and Circulation, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, co-organized with Fia Backström, 21 Feb, 2020
• with Colin Self, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 01 Oct, 2018
• March Meeting 2018: Active Forms, Sharjah Art Foundation, Shuwaihen, Sharjah, UAE, 17-19 Mar 2018
• Experience It: Martine Syms, A conversation with Martine Syms, Sharon Hayes and Jon Rafman, The Lab with California College of the Arts, San Francisco CA, USA, 26 Feb 2018
• Lounge Talk, Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 09 Feb 2018
• Martine Syms and Rizvana Bradley in conversation, Raven Row, London, England, 23 Apr 2017
• Friday Flights at the Getty, Getty Center, Los Angeles CA, USA, 26 Aug 2016
• Martine Syms, Todd Madigan Gallery & Department of Art at California State University, Bakersfield CA, USA, 16 Feb 2016
• Tip of Her Tongue: Martine Syms ‘Misdirected Kiss’, The Oculus Hall at The Broad, Los Angeles CA, USA, 21 Jan 2016
• A Pilot For A Show About Nowhere, PNCA Mediatheque, Portland OR, USA, 12 May 2015
• Seven on Seven, 7th Edition: Empathy & Disgust, Rhizome, New York NY, USA, 2 May 2015
• Lessons of the Tradition, California State University at Long Beach, Long Beach CA, USA, 2015
• Quality Television, Light Industry, New York NY, USA 28 Apr 2015
• Lessons of the Tradition, Pomona College, Claremont CA, USA, 2015
• Nite Life, O, Miami Poetry Festival, Miami FL, USA, 2015
• In the Archives, Contemporary Artists Books, Los Angeles CA, USA, 2015
• Lessons of the Tradition, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA, USA, 2014
• Black Radical Imagination II, REDCAT, Los Angeles CA, USA, 14 Nov 2014
• Black Vernacular: Lessons of the Tradition, London College of Communication, London, England, 17 Oct 2014
• Do You Follow? Art in Circulation, Rhizome/ICA Institute of Contemporary Art London, London, England, 15-17 Oct 2014
• Black Vernacular: Lessons of the Tradition, Oberlin College & Observatory, Oberlin OH, USA, 29 April 2014
• Most Days, Moogfest Biennial, Asheville NC, USA, 26 Apr 2014
• Black Vernacular, Insights 2014 Design Lecture Series, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN, USA, 18 Mar 2014
• Direct Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis MN, USA, 2014
• Most Days, Arts Incubator, University of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA, 2014
• Direct Design, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles CA, USA, 2014
• Becoming Artists: Critique, Originality & Identity - Managing Biography: Negotiating Audience, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA, 08 Feb 2014
• New Paradigms in Digital Media ‘Mainstreaming’ a DIY Culture, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD, USA, 13 Apr 2013
• Conceptual Entrepreneurism, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore MD, USA, 2013
• Black Vernacular: Reading New Media, SXSW, Austin TX, USA, 2013
• Science Fiction & What It Feels Like To (Already) Live In the Future, Actual Size, Los Angeles CA, 11 Jan 2013
• Real Talk, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia CA, USA, 05 Nov 2012
• Reading Politics, Summer Forum, Chicago IL, USA, 2012
• The Didactic Possibilities of Film Titles, Houston Museum of African American Art, Houston TX, USA, 2011
• Artist/Authors, The Gregory School, Houston TX, USA, 2011
• Implications & Distinctions, Project Row Houses, Houston TX, USA, 2011
• Future Plan and Program - Lecture by Steffani Jemison and Martine Syms, Prairie View A & M University, Prairie View TX, USA, 19 Apr 2011

Solo exhibitions

• Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), Martine Syms, The Queen's English, 2014[37]
• Locust Projects (Miami), Art on the Move: Nite Life, 2015[38]
• White Flag Projects (Saint Louis, Missouri), Martine Syms, 2015[39]
• Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA), Notes on Gesture, 2015[36]
• Bridget Donahue (New York), Martine Syms: Vertical Elevated Oblique, 2015[40]
• Audain Gallery (Vancouver, Canada), Borrowed Lady, 2016[36]
• Human Resources (Los Angeles), Martine Syms: Black Box, 2016[41]
• Karma International (Beverly Hills, California), Martine Syms: com port ment, 2016
• Institute of Contemporary Art (London, England), Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble, 2016[42]
• Museum of Modern Art (New York), Projects 106: Martine Syms, 2017[43]
• Camden Arts Centre (London, England), VNXXCAS: Martine Syms, 2017[36]
• CONDO: Bridget Donahue hosted by Sadie Coles HQ (London, England), The Easy Demands, 2017[36]
• Bridget Donahue (New York), Martine Syms: Big Surprise, 2018[44]
• Graham Foundation (Chicago IL), Incense Sweaters & Ice, 2018[36]
• Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago IL), SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2018[36]
• Sadie Coles HQ (London, England), Grand Calme, 2018[36]
• Serralves Foundation (Porto, Portugal), Contemporary Projects: Martine Syms, 2018[36]
• Secession (Vienna, Austria), Boon, 2019[36]
• Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond VA), Shame Space, 2019[36]
• Sadie Coles HQ off-site: 24 Cork Street (London, England), Ugly Plymouths, 2020[36]
• SLAM | Saint Louis Art Museum (St. Louis MO), New Media Series, 2020[36]
• 5239 Melrose Avenue (Los Angeles CA), New York, and Sadie Coles HQ (London, England), Ugly Plymouths, presented by Bridget Donahue, 2020[36]
• Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen, Norway), 2021[36]

Group exhibitions

• The Green Gallery (Milwaukee), YOU CAN DEPEND ON THE SUNSHINE: Paul Cowan, Marco Kane, Martine Syms, 2007[45]
• New Museum (New York), Museum as Hub: Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet, 2011[36]
• MCA Chicago, We Are Here: Art & Design Out of Context, 2011[46]
• The Green Gallery (Milwaukee), Three Card Monte, 2011[36]
• Public Fiction (Los Angeles), Act II: The Props, 2012[36]
• Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), First Among Equals, 2012 [47][48]
• Badlands Unlimited, Apple iTunes, How to Download a Boyfriend, 2012[36]
• Acid Rain TV (New York), The Didactic Possibilities of Film Titles, 2012[36]
• Young Art (Los Angeles), Mise-En-Scéne, 2012[36]
• Transfer Gallery (New York), gURLs, 2013[36]
• Aran Cravey (Los Angeles), Rhetoric, 2014[36]
• New Museum (New York), First Look: Martine Syms: Reading Trayvon Martin, 2014[36]
• 356 Mission (Los Angeles), Another Cats Show, 2014[36]
• REDCAT (Los Angeles), Small New Films, 2014[36]
• Cooper Union (New York), Black Radical Imagination, 2014[36]
• Studio Museum (Harlem, New York), Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art, 2014–2015[49]
• Project Row Houses (Houston, Texas), How We Work, 2015[36]
• Todd Madigan Gallery (California State University), Open House, 2015[36]
• ACTRE TV acretv.org, Tele-novela, 2015[36]
• Chan Gallery, Pomona College (Claremont), Candice Lin/Martine Syms, 2015[36]
• ICA Institute of Contemporary Art London (London, England), Artists’ Film Club: Avant-Noir, Volume 2, 2015[36]
• Bureau (New York), The Daily Show, 2015[36]
• Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Intangibles, 2015[36]
• New Museum (New York), 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, 2015[50]
• The Coming Community, Artspace NZ (Auckland, New Zealand), Potentially Yours, 2016[36]
• Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo, Norway), Los Angeles - A Fiction, 2016[36]
• Galerie Conradi (Hamburg, Germany), Umwelt Inversion, 2016[36]
• Oakville Galleries (Oakville, Canada), Down To Write You This Poem Sat, 2016[36]
• Occidental Temporary (Paris, France), Cool Memories, 2016[36]
• International Center of Photography (New York), Public, Private, Secret, 2016[36]
• Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only[51]
• Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta), It Can Howl, 2016[36]
• HOME (Manchester, England), Imitation of Life: Melodrama and Race in the 21st Century, 2016[36]
• Whitechapel Gallery (London, England), Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966), 2016[36]
• Index Stockholm- The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation (Stockholm, Sweden), Autobiography, 2016[36]
• Franklin Street Works (Stamford), Cut-Up: Contemporary Collage and Cut-Up Histories through a Feminist Lens, 2016[36]
• K11 Art Foundation pop-up space (Hong Kong), .COM/.CN, presented by K11 Art Foundation and Klaus Biesenbach and Peter Eleey, 2017[36]
• Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon, Portugal), Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966), 2017[36]
• ICA Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (Philadelphia), Speech/Acts, 2017[36]
• Artspace (Sydney, Australia), The Public Body, 2017[36]
• The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), Analog Currency, 2017[36]
• Chateau Shatto (Los Angeles), At This Stage, 2017[36]
• Palazzo Contarini Polignac (Venice, Italy), Future Generation Art Prize @ Venice 2017, organised by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, 2017[36]
• The Kitchen (New York), That I am reading backwards and into for a purpose, to go on:, 2017[36]
• Trinity Square Video (Toronto, Canada), What does one do with such a clairvoyant image?, 2017[36]
• Raven Row (London, England), 56 Artillery Lane, 2017[36]
• Galerie PCP (Paris, France), Our Words Return in Patterns (Part 1), 2017[36]
• Whitney Museum (New York), Whitney Biennal, as part of the John Riepenhoff installation, 2017[36]
• Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon (Lyon, France), Los Angeles - A Fiction, 2017[36]
• Pinchuk Art Centre (Kyiv, Ukraine), Exhibition of 21 Artists Shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize 2017, 2017[36]
• Public Art Fund (New York), Commercial Break, 2017[36]
• Dazibao (Montreal, Canada), I Am the Organizer of My Own Archive, 2017[36]
• Team Gallery (New York), The Love Object (organized by Tom Brewer), 2017[36]
• University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbour MI), Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 To Today, 2018[36]
• Madre museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina (Naples, Italy), Per_forming a collection. The Show Must Go_ON, 2018[36]
• FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial For Contemporary Art, Toby Devan Lewis Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, An Evening of Queen White, 2018[36]
• Gwangju (South Korea), The 12th Gwangju Biennale Exhibition: Imagined Borders, 2018[36]
• Grunwald Gallery, School of Art, Architecture + Design (Bloomington IN), Out of Easy Reach, 2018[36]
• Kunstverein (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Succession Sounds, 2018[36]
• Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Eckhaus Latta: Possessed, 2018[36]
• Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin OH), Radically Ordinary: Scenes form Black Life in America Since 1968, 2018[36]
• Art Basel (Basel, Switzerland), Unlimited, 2018[36]
• The Gallery, Michael’s (Santa Monica CA), 2018[36]
• Gallery 400 and DePaul Art Museum (Chicago IL), Out of Easy Reach, 2018[36]
• Kadist Foundation (Paris, France), This is Utopia, to Some, 2018[36]
• A Lone, installed adjacent to Capitol Hill Link rail station within city-wide project, Seattle WA, 2018[36]
• Gordon Robichaux (New York), A Page from My Intimate Journal (Part 1), 2018[36]
• Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions 2018, Mapping the Invisible, 2018[36]
• ICA Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (Boston MA), Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, 2018[36]
• The Shed (New York), Manual Override, 2019[36]
• Yuz Museum (Shanghai, China), tongewölbe T25 (Ingolstadt, Germany), In Production: Art and the Studio System, 2019[36]
• Stony Island Arts Bank (Chicago IL), In the Absence of Light: Gesture, Humor and Resistance in The Black Aesthetic: Selections from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, 2019[36]
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco CA), The Body Electric, 2019[36]
• Luma Westbau, (Zürich Switzerland), It’s Urgent! – Part II, 2019[36]
• Gladstone Gallery (New York), Dry Land, 2019[36]
• Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Celebration of Our Enemies: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, 2019[36]
• Los Angeles, The Foundation of the Museum: MOCA’s Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019[36]
• R & Company (New York), Chairs Beyond Right & Wrong, 2019[36]
• Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Whitney Biennial 2019, 2019[36]
• Schinkel Pavillon (Berlin, Germany), Straying from the Line, 2019[36]
• FuturDome (Milan, Italy), Hypertimes, 2019[36]
• Lismore Castle Arts (Waterford, Ireland), Palimpsest, 2019[36]
• Walker Art Centre (Minneapolis MN), The Body Electric, 2019[36]
• ICA Institute of Contemporary Art at University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia PA), Colored People Time: Mundane Futures, 2019[36]
• MDC MOAD Miami Dade College Museum of Art and Design (Miami FL), The Body Electric, 2020[36]
• The Luminary online (St. Louis MO), Self Maintenance Resource Center 2020, 2020[36]
• TOWER MMK, MMK Frankfurt, (Frankfurt am Main Germany), Sammlung, 2020[36]
• Gucci x Daelim Museum (Seoul, South Korea), No Space, Just a Place. Eterotopia, 2020[36]
• Auckland Art Gallery (Auckland, New Zealand), Honestly Speaking: The Word, the Body and the Internet, 2020[36]
• de Young Museum (San Francisco CA), Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI, 2020[36]
• Princeton University (Princeton NJ), William Greaves, Sondra Perry, Martine Syms, organized by Martine Syms, 2020[36]
• MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge MA), Colored People Time: Mundane Futures, Quotidian Pasts, Banal Presents, 2020[36]
• Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, UC University California Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz CA), We Are Not Aliens: Arthur Jafa, Martine Syms, and Afro-Futurism 2.0, as part of Beyond the End of the World: Approaches in Contemporary Art Seminar, 2020[36]

References

Further reading

• Hunt, Amanda. "Martine Syms." aperture: The Magazine of Photography and Ideas. Ed. Michael Famighetti. New York: Aperture Foundation, 2016. 132-137.
• Sargent, Antwaun (May 31, 2017). "At MoMA, Martine Syms Puts Black Female Identity under the Lens". Artsy. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
• St. Félix, Doreen. "How to Be a Successful Black Woman." The New Yorker, July 8, 2018. Retrieved August 11, 2020.

External links

• Official website
• Martine Syms | HOW TO SEE Projects 106 with Martine Syms, The Museum of Modern Art
• Flashartonline.com
• Archive.kchungradio.org
• Vimeo.com
• Dominica Publishing

На других языках

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- [en] Martine Syms

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[fr] Martine Syms

Martine Syms, née en 1988, est une artiste américaine. Elle vit et travaille à Los Angeles.

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