Piss on the Whitney Biennial: "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
This cis-art-cage wasn't better than the real thing. :( Surprised?
Hey there wicked pissers, did you miss me?
The goss…
I’ve been on a working slaycation in the U.S. of A. putting together the first PISSUE for you all, but in the midst of this effort I sent a poorly worded request to the Whitney Museum for a press pass to the preview of the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which they have decided to call Even Better Than the Real Thing. LOL. So they sent me one. I found it exceedingly amusing that I was likely one of the youngest people there and many of the attendees seemed to be semi-decrepit art fuddy duddies who were cruising from bench to bench.
But after a harrowing drive into the city (they hate to see a bitch from New Jersey winning!) I received my press pass and entered an elevator which was also being occupied by the serene presence of Rujeko Hockley, an associate curator at the Whitney, whose marital secrets I had just head all about in that David Zwirner podcast lesbian-supreme Helen Molesworth does. Did I tell her this? No! I went up to the top floor that the Biennial occupies—one of two—and began pissing about. Yes two. Just two floors. 71 artists. They stuck the brilliant Trans artist Pippa Garner on the 3rd floor walls on either side of the bathroom there, name plate TAPED to the oddly-stained wood panelling. For me, this was not it, but Pippa was everything and what I expected after reading their press release.
Where I start bitching about it all in an informed manner:
Why does the Whitney have such a hard time doing a Biennial? They have done it 81 times, 21 times as the Biennial and 60 as an Annual. They also have done some exceedingly important (“Black Male” curated by Thelma Golden in 1994, presented 3 years after Rodney King was murdered in L.A.) and recently good shows (I liked the Henry Taylor vehicle “B-Side” which ran last summer even though the Whitney tried to overly politicize it). But the problem with the Whitney Biennial is their urge to blow hot smoke up everyone’s ass as a way of faking relevance, which they don’t need to do, and never fails to be at its most noxious every two years.
The press release and framing of this show was absurd. Like, really bad. Let me tell you why: Because the work had nothing to do with the ideas being talked about. The curators, Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, lay out a broad vision of what it means to look at something “real” as we are getting more exposed to AI generated content on the daily. Ok, realness! The problem is, only one artist in the show uses AI and talks about it in their work (Holly Herndon & May Dryhurst’s boring ginger Dune 2 AI huntress/cuntress which is the opening view on the 6th floor).
This was not your realness per ballroom, per queer and Trans identity which looks to metamorphosize (if that’s a word) gender and the body’s ability to be seen within the context of “cisness,” to pass—a concept which many in the community have begun to move beyond. The “realness” of the online and AI which the curators bring forth is one which they note threatens trans and other racially and socially marginalized bodies as being tools to describe them as not “authentic,” housed within a cisgender point of view. We are asked to view these bodies from the outside the house looking in, not sitting at a metaphorical table inside where the work is having a discussion. There was not an attempt to engage with queer theory that I could discern beyond a “listening tour” where the curators talked to artists about the vibes-at-large. If the project of the show was about these bodies and this idea of transgression and not centered on AI, then that would’ve been better.
For decades, sociological theory has documented how our lives are simultaneously produced through and against normative structures of sex, gender, and sexuality. These normative structures are often believed to operate along presumably“natural,” biological, and essentialized binaries of male/female, man/woman, and heterosexual/homosexual. However, as the lives and experiences of transgender people and their families become increasingly socially visible, these normative structuring binaries are called into stark question as they. fail to adequately articulate and encompass these social actors’ identities and social group memberships. - (Pfeffer 1), “I Don’t Like Passing as a Straight Woman”: Queer Negotiations of Identity and Social Group Membership.” You can read the full PDF by clicking the TITLE.
I imagine that Iles and Onli read this paper in framing the show itself. But what they didn’t go into throughout the exploration of the work as far I could tell, or maybe I should say as far as anyone who doesn’t buy the $50 catalog with essays and discussions etc. in it, was an idea of ‘ownership’ of media, of one’s body, of an identity which someone may want to fit into. Per, Pfeffer:
“Passing” carries the assumption that certain individuals somehow naturally embody particular identities to which others can stake only inauthentic membership claims. In a sense, some individuals are understood as rightful“owners” of membership to particular social identity groups—most notably, those groups holding disproportionate social power and authority (Harris 1993; Calavita 2000). The concept of passing also relies on juxtaposed notions of conscious, intentional, deceptive“dupers” and presumably natural, authentic, deceived “dupes” (Serano 2007). (Pfeffer 11).
Within the realm of AI and the biological determinism that the conservative right and other hate groups use to delegitimize marginalized bodies across the board, it’s not immediately present in the curation that there is any dialogue between their assumptions made about passing and an intersection with the struggle to define ownership over AI-created things. The curators seemed to assert that people believe they are inherently being duped by either gender transgression or by AI without interrogating the narrow and retrograde nature of that ideology as the actual inciting reason behind the violence against bodies which the curators note. And further, no acknowledgement of the heterosexual “duping” of victimhood which so-called normative people in the world put onto themselves when confronted with gender transgression is made. There is a lack of synergy which leaves the framing sloppy. It kinda feels like they extrapolated Butler’s “Gender Trouble” onto lots of other things.
I suppose it’s also a difficult proposition for the artists when the average artist rate for a Biennial or comparable group show in the U.S.A. is anywhere from a $500-$1,500 payment. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but when a lot of program is made of younger and diverse artists highlighting what the curators note are marginalized backgrounds and older artists who I hadn’t heard of (some of them), is the Biennial engaging in some kind of exploitation here? It seemed like they thought we should all be grateful to be there witnessing these not-often-seen names when their art IS viewable—just outside of the white cubes which the Whitney claims difference from.
Marsha P. Johnson was resurrected in several works which when standing alone resonate powerfully. Ms. Johsnon was asked to take on a figurative role it seems by the curators to become a universal embodiment of a certain knowable transness, which until recently had been erased. Aren’t we done asking Black Trans women to do all the work? Even in death? In a way, they present her as a universal symbol for transgression since her body coalesced so many different identities in and of itself. In a commissioned installation on the 6th floor terrace by Kiyan Williams, a chrome Marsha P. Johnson watches as a mud White House sinks into the ground. Within the context of the exhibition’s framing, if feels like she’s being asked to be representative of all non-cis, non-white bodies, left outside to draw in visitors from the street along with Williams’ inverted flag.
Much of the video art which is going to be displayed on a rotating schedule throughout the duration of the Biennial’s run was not on view. It represents more of what the curators babbled about in their press release with more identities being represented in the subject matters and authorship of those works. But you’d have to see the show at least 5 times, paying 5 ticket prices to be able to fully engage with all these works. That’s great if you don’t work or have cash to throw around all the time but for those Americans whose bodies are on display, who have been economically as well as physically marginalized, the price of looking yourself in the mirror is too steep for such a badly gilded, brass reward.
By taking so much wall space and dedicating it to an acknowledgment of violence against trans and other marginalized bodies, Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli do a disservice to those bodies in not representing them wholly throughout the show. The Whitney has done a disservice to the artists in the Biennial whose work is thought-provoking and at times brilliant on its own (Seba Calfuqueo’s Tray Tray Ko comes to mind here). It stops short of queering the real in a way that the fluidity of free bodily exploration allows to be liberating. Instead, we are locked in a cis art cage with the curators, in which a broad range of identities are represented on a ship without a rudder or wheel.
Pfeffer, Carla A. “‘I Don’t Like Passing as a Straight Woman’: Queer Negotiations of Identity and Social Group Membership.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 120, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–44. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/677197. Accessed 13 Mar. 2024.
What I liked and what you should see:
Now, like the recently robbed actor/scrooge Paul Giamatti showing off his IN-N-OUT cufflinks, I am going to talk about some of my favorite things since I promised myself I wasn’t going to be a total McBitch about the Biennial—fueled by Wendy’s fries. It will be brief, I promise.
Tray Tray Ko (2022), Seba Calfuqueo
With the chiming of Calfuqueo’s earrings rippling in the background, the fluidity of Mapuche cosmology (which is the development of one’s own universe here) is dragged as a bolt of blue fabric through an area of Chile which the government is seeking to take away from Indigenous hands. It was stunning.
It’s a few minutes long but work sitting and watching the whole thing.
Ricerche: four (2024), Sharon Hayes.
A conversation with queer elders about how liberated they feel, how the conceive their real and chosen families, Ricerche: four (2024) was amusingly being viewed by old fuddy duddies who used the work as an opportunity to sit. But they became an extension of the piece by listening in. This was what the thesis of the Biennial could have been. Why not more like this?
It was interesting to hear how many people in the circle talked about how they found/find the word “queer” which I used to describe them troubling because of its life as reappropriated hate speech. This level of nuance is important to have humanized through these stories. More benches and chairs are stored behind the screens which invite more people to sit around and listen, and I thought that was nice.
Pollinator (2022), Tourmaline.
This 5 minute film tracks a mythohistory of the life and death of Marsha P. Johnson, going beyond her physical form and looking at how the memories of her have come in and out of view over time.
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” emanates from the space throughout the whole floor of the museum as the film splices clips of Tourmaline in a floral headdress and Johnson’s funeral. For me, this presented an almost creepy effect of being watched, watching. Like a spirit was surveying our responses to the material and reminding us that Marsha P. Johnson was real but also more than the sum of her parts.
Inventor’s Office (2021-24), Pippa Garner.
I didn’t like that this was shoved next to the bathroom, because it seems like the powers that be are trying to make some kind of allusion to cruising or something or if they didn’t have abetter wall. That being said, Garner is taking the fragments of cisgender and hacking them as she calls it to reconstruct a trans identity through images and symbols.
OK! I can’t write about more so here’s a list of some other artists whose work was good.
Isaac Julien, Carmen Winant, P. Staff, Harmony Hammond, Lotus L. Kang, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Dionne Lee.
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