How Can We Think of Art at a Time Like This?
How Can We Think of Art at a Time Like This? is an online exhibition, co-curated by Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen as a platform for the exchange of ideas at this time of crisis. We invited artists who are considered thought leaders, artists who struggle with futuristic pessimism, political outrage and psychic melt-downs. The invited artists have responded with unbridled enthusiasm and we will be posting new artists every day for the foreseeable future.
This site is also a platform for free expression, inviting visitors to post responses on our Commons page. We hope to open a dialogue at a time of social distancing. Art offers solace or has instigated resistance and rebellion. This was true during the AIDS crisis, in the weeks after 9/11, at the shock of Hurricane Sandy and all the other signs of global warming altering environments around the world.
We invite you to join in the conversation and appreciate art responding to times like these.
Shirin Neshat
“Land of Dreams” comprised of a series of photographs and video installations, is a portrait of America from my perspective as an Iranian/American artist…
Accra Shepp,
Raj Greigarn,
Louyi Ferrin
So many unimaginable things have happened, some might say even impossible things…
Kambui Olujimi
There’s a popular notion that riots are violent spontaneous overflows of emotion, usually in response to an incident…
Dread Scott
A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday, 2015
&
Suite Malcolm, May 2020
Lerato Shadi
My performance piece “Mosako wa nako” loosely translates to a “River of time”. It is the product of sixty hours of labor, which I carry out publicly over ten days…
Runo Lagomarsino
“The virus alone does not discriminate, but we humans surely do, formed and animated as we are by the interlocking powers of nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and capitalism. “
From “Capitalism Has its Limits” by Judith Butler
Ignore What Is Below Here. These Are Not Part Of The New Exhibition Page.
Enter Travis Somerville
Enter Judith Bernstein
Chitra Ganesh
In Chitra Ganesh’s haunting video, Silhouette in the Graveyard, future and past meet in Maitreya, an avatar of the Future Buddha, whose prophetic descent to earth is said to usher in a new age at a time when the terrestrial world has lost its way…
Jon Henry
Stranger Fruit was created in response to the senseless murders of black men across the nation by police violence…
Ombretta Agró Andruff
Charting dreams, fears and premonitions of collapse, Memories from the Future is a series of performative actions made in the landscape of Florida and recorded in video and photography…
Elektra KB
“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
Liliana Porter
Making art in these disconcerting times gives us a sort of immunity, not against the virus, but against the fear, the isolation, the madness, the chaos. In fact, to make art is a privilege that we have, the opportunity to communicate with others...
Chow Chun Fai
Hong Kongers have been under the status of resistance for almost a year. For us it is now a continuous fight under the difficult circumstances of Covid-19.
My paintings are reactions. I did not expect the paintings would change the world. Someone throws a stone at you, you won’t stand still…