Is it still important to talk critically about Surrealism today? This avant-garde episode of international art history has been revisited over and over again, from tributes and revivals to critical works and retrospective exhibitions. From a purist, restricted view, Surrealism is reduced to a datable European movement that ended in the mid-20th century. For others, the term is a tradable currency, a flexible category used[…..]

#representation #WhitneyMuseum #EmmettTill #DanaSchutz #MartinBerger #race #civilrights So much hinges on the question of audience. Who is presumed to engage with artwork, and on what terms? In the museum, people of color so often feel that we are not the intended audience. The hurt that we experience on realizing that disconnect—that we are here for art but art is not necessarily here for us—has now been[…..]

For the Chilean-born visual artist, poet, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, the textual and the visual exist and function together in a familial relation, as if the making of objects and the shaping of words into images are knotted together like threads, binding and weaving themselves to form reified constellations that speak of the individual and collective simultaneously.[1] Vicuña’s work has a rich engagement with the[…..]

Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Andreas Petrossiants reviews The Supreme Rifts… A Measured Propinquity at Marian Goodman Gallery in London. In Michael Newman’s poetic text accompanying the[…..]

In light of the current controversy over Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till, today we’re re-reading Anu Vikram’s essay about the last Whitney Biennial, in which Joe Scanlan’s use of the fictional Black persona “Donelle Woolford” initiated a heated debate about representation, race, inclusion, and oppression. Vikram notes, “Scanlan’s decision to cast Black women as agents for his personal edification and creative expression […] supercedes concern for[…..]

The gallery space in the loft of Punto Gozadera, a trans-feminist community center, is rough and unfinished. Bare fluorescent lights hanging from wires provide the only illumination. Black fabric separates the gallery from the workshop and meeting rooms. Everything feels makeshift and in progress. During the opening of the current exhibition, Corpografías en Resistencía, a small group—mostly made up of queer and feminist activists—gathered in[…..]

Recently many have observed that current American film and television scenarios feel familiar, with offerings that appear diverse and multicultural, as they would have seemed in earlier decades. This is not to say that the struggles of marginalized communities have been overcome; just because a person is visible does not mean that person is liberated. However, media representations can illustrate experiences outside of dominant cultural[…..]