Explore artworks on Ocula by artists who have shown at, or will show work in in one of the most polarising but hotly anticipated exhibitions in the American art calendar, the Whitney Biennial.
Read MoreInstigated by The Whitney Museum's founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932, the bi-annual New York event was introduced to reflect developments in the art of the United States, and as such each show triggers a cacophony of art world comment. One of its most infamous iterations was the 1993 edition, which many derided at the time for its focus on identity politics. In recent years that show has been re-evaluated for how it drew attention to the experience of people of colour in the United States. Despite its controversies, the show is seen as an important barometer on the United State's contemporary art scene, and the context it exists within.
Earlier this year, as covered by Ocula News, The Whitney Museum of American Art announced the artists participating in the museum's 80th biennial, which is open to the public from 6 April. The list includes some of the most closely watched artists working today, including Rick Lowe, Adam Pendalton, Lucy Raven, Rebecca Belmore, Nayland Blake, Raven Chacon, Tony Cokes, Alex Da Corte, Ellen Gallagher, EJ Hill, Alfredo Jaar, Julie Tolentino, Rodney McMillian, Guadalupe Rosales, and Kandis Williams. The artists included are some of those who also had work featured in the 1993 edition, including Coco Fusco, Renée Green, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Charles Ray.
Entitled, Quiet as It's Kept, the 2022 Biennial is co-organised by Whitney curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, with curatorial assistants Mia Matthias, Gabriel Almeida Baroja; and Margaret Kross. Its title references a colloquial saying that has been invoked by the likes of jazz drummer Max Roach, novelist Toni Morrison, and artist David Hammons.
In a joint statement on the proposed show, Breslin and Edwards referred to the biennial as an ongoing experiment, the result of a shared commitment to artists and the work they do, going on to say, that it served as a 'forum for artists, and the works that will be presented reflect their enigmas, the things that perplex them, the important questions they are asking'.
Breslin and Edwards added, 'Rather than proposing a unified theme, we pursue a series of hunches throughout the exhibition: that abstraction demonstrates a tremendous capacity to create, share, and, sometimes withhold, meaning; that research-driven conceptual art can combine the lushness of ideas and materiality; that personal narratives sifted through political, literary, and pop cultures can address larger social frameworks; that artworks can complicate what "American" means by addressing the country's physical and psychological boundaries; and that our 'now' can be reimagined by engaging with under-recognized artistic models and artists we've lost.'
