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| ABOUT TRaC |
Fast TRaC Winter 2004
Here is Elsewhere @ MoMA I don't visit art museums very often. Walking through endlessly dreary and estranging rows of ancient Italian canvas at the Met, I am hard-pressed to find a resonating connection between my own life and the paintings on the walls. Sometimes it's difficult to be affected by something so distant that it seems not like a natural extension of our world, but like a vague and indirect element when compared to the issues of today. This is probably why the Museum of Modern Art is my favorite museum in New York City. It speaks to the sensibilities of my generation and reflects on the themes of my environment. One of MoMA's current exhibitions is the sixth show of its Artist's Choice series, in which artists are invited to select and exhibit pieces from the museum's permanent collection. This time, the curator is Palestinian-English artist Mona Hatoum and the aura that permeates her exhibition is one of ambivalence, ambiguity, and contradiction, tinged with a powerful spark of controversy and challenge. The show is Here is Elsewhere, and it comments on alienation, exile, and displacement that is both physical and symbolic, as manifested by the social issues of nationalism, race, and sexual orientation. The first composition that commanded my attention was the juxtaposition of two pieces called Untitled, by Robert Gober and David Wojnarowicz. The first is a neatly tucked suburban bed. The second is a picture of a young boy straight out of a 50s sitcom like Leave it to Beaver, with a mischievous expression and a gap between his teeth. Surrounding the picture is the harrowing story of the boy's life after "he discovers he desires to place his naked body on the naked body of another boy." His experience is one of misunderstanding, panic, and violence with implications that stretch beyond the personal into the social, political and philosophical. The presence of the picture next to the bed, though deceptively simple, is one of the most jarring representations of homosexuality I've ever encountered. Although this boy's story obviously takes place decades before our time, one is provoked to acknowledge stark contemporary parallels. The next piece that resonated with me was Robert Gober's Prison Window. It is a square cut out of the wall and lined with prison bars. Behind the bars is a bright blue sky. But although this vision looks promising at first sight, we see that the contrived window is literally cut from a museum and the freedom of the sky is, inevitably, manufactured and fake. This sort of effect is common among many of the artworks of Here is Elsewhere. At first they seem ordinary and plain. But there's something about them, something incongruous. Maybe it's the location, or the context of the works around them, or the way in which they're arranged. Once you notice that anomaly, though, you can't take your eyes off it. It touches you, and it dares you to examine the world around you in surprising and disconcerting ways. Another work that intrigued me was Cheryl Donegan's sexually provocative performance video, Head. In it, a young woman is letting milk pour into her mouth from a hole near the bottom of a large container, while rock music plays in the background. Perhaps this is a celebration of sexuality or a comment on America's identity as alternatively or simultaneously puritanical and pornographic. In any case, it is certain to make you consider how ingrained sexuality is in every aspect of our society. A piece that I imagine to be close to Ms. Hatoum's own sensibilities is Gabriel Orozco's Horses Running Endlessly, a huge chessboard filled only with scattered knights facing in different directions, evocative of alienation and confusion. Although each knight can theoretically move in any direction, it remains immobile, as if stunned and blinded by the possibilities. Here is Elsewhere is timely if only because of MoMA's own temporary exile in Queens, while its Midtown building is being renovated. But I believe that our age is defined by our contradictions, and this exhibition examines some of them with shocking directness. The main room of the exhibition holds Bruce Nauman's video, Think, in which heads pop out and annoyingly yell "Think! Think! Think! Think!" Even if you are not looking at that particular monitor, its taunting rhythm reverberates in your mind and overwhelms you. What conclusions can you reach when nothing is as it seemed, when things you perceived as safe and hopeful now seem dangerous and disturbing? The unflinching realism of this exhibition will challenge every assumption you hold about society and will ask questions and answer none. That is, if you let it.
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