Navigating from video to installation, drawing and publishing, the practice of artist and filmmaker Martine Symsis that of a humorous, sharp, and somewhat insolent commentary on contemporary society made in the light of her own experience, of the history of blackness and feminism.
Her work gleans and assembles images from cinema, television and Internet culture, social media and surveillance cameras, as well as numerous musical references from Hip hop and R’n’B, to examine the way in which individualities are built and perceived. Between personal references, historical archives, invocations of spirituality and representations from the collective imaginary, Syms reflects on the staging of the self, on how identities are played out or imposed through stereotypes.
She analyzes gestures, social and affective relationships, and the way in which certain power dynamics are played out within them. Comprising works produced over the last ten years and shown for the first time in France, this exhibition revisits the extraordinary work of an artist whose intuitions, obsessions and characters map out some of the issues and doubts of our time.
Martine Syms was born in 1988 in Los Angeles (USA).
