JOCELYN MILLER

The first US solo museum exhibition by Martine Syms, taking place at The Museum of Modern Art, which presented an immersive installation centering on the artist's first feature-length film, Incense Sweaters & Ice. Shot on location in Los Angeles, St. Louis, MO, and Clarksdale, MI, the film follows three protagonists—Mrs. Queen Esther Bernetta White, Girl, and WB (“whiteboy”)—as they navigate dramas of surveillance, moving between watching, being watched, and remaining unseen. Accompanying the film is a suite of photographs sized to standard American movie posters and a metal mesh structure inspired by the geographies of the Great Migration. The film's expansive cinema is also accessible from an artist-developed app artwork, wyd rn.

 

Using video and performance, Syms examines representations of blackness and its relationship to narrative, vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. 

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