Martine Syms

Total

Exhibition

until 09 Feb 2025

currently
© Martine Syms, courtesy the artist; Dominica Inc.; Sadie Coles HQ, London; and Bridget Donahue, New York.

Written and directed by Martine Syms with artist Diamond Stingily, The African Desperate follows student Palace Bryant over the course of a very long day in 2017 that begins with her graduation from art school.

Set against the lush backdrop of late summer, Palace navigates the pitfalls of success and the flaws of the art world.
Martine Syms has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humour, and social commentary.

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).

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