June at the MoMA has an impressive line up of four contemporary installations that offers perspectives of artists who utilize new and old technologies in profound ways. Installations include Nan Goldin‘s famous photographic personal diary, Tony Oursler‘s phantasmagoric environments, Bouchra Kahlili‘s urgently topical videos, and Teiji Furuhashi’s kinetic room-sized installations.
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
June 11, 2016- February 12, 2017
Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a personal narrative from the artist’s experiences during the late 1970s-80s around Boston, New York, and Berlin. Goldin wrote “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the diary I let people read…The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record.” Consisting of nearly 700 snapshot-like portraits partnered with an evocative music soundtrack, it is presented in its original 35mm format, with photographs from the Museum’s collection. Introducing the installation is a selection of materials from the artist’s archive, including posters and flyers announcing early iterations of The Ballad. Live performances will periodically accompany The Ballad during the course of the Museum’s presentation; performance details will be announced during the course of the exhibition presentation.
Tony Oursler: Imponderable
June 18, 2016- January 8, 2017
Tony Oursler’s Imponderable offers an alternative depiction of modernism that reveals the intersection of technological advancements and occult phenomena over the last two centuries. The installation is presented in a “5-D” cinematic environment that utilizes a contemporary form of Pepper’s ghost—a 19th-century phantasmagoric device—and a range of sensory effects. Imponderable is an immersive feature-length film that integrates Oursler’s family background with social, spiritual, and empirical history of the virtual image.
Bouchra Khalili: The Mapping Journey Project
June 1- October 10, 2016
Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project is a series of videos on several screens that detail the stories of eight individuals forced by political and economic circumstances to travel illegally throughout the Mediterranean basin. While traveling across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East the artist met these individuals in transit centers. Mrs. Khalili invited each individual to narrate his or her journey while physically marking it on a geopolitical map of the region. Forms of representation and visibility that are demanded by systems of surveillance, international border control, and the news media are protested with the absence of the subjects faces. Khalili’s work challenges the questions of citizenship, community, and political agency by forming critical and ethical approaches.
Teiji Furuhashi: Lovers
June 11, 2016- February 12,2017
Teiki Furuhashi’s Lovers is an engaging room-sized multimedia installation featuring life-sized images of the artist and members of Dumb Type, that are projected throughout the room choreographed to overlap and interact with one another. The interaction between the projection sequences act as eponymous “lovers”; overlapping, running past, pausing in embrace. The work was made one year before Furuhashi’s death from an AIDS-related illness. Lovers speak’s to what the artist has described as “the theme of contemporary love in an ultra-romantic way.” Presented for the first time since its inaugural exhibition at MoMA in 1995, the installation showcases the results of an extensive conservation effort recently completed by the Museum’s media conservators.
