The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is a necessary visit when you are in New York City. The best time to go is mid week and early in the morning. The museum tends to be filled with tourists, so exercising patience is key. I would encourage you to grab a sandwich from Zabar’s and drink some liquids prior to entering the MOMA space. You will need the energy to cover the breath of their acquisitions.
Important exhibits to peruse are:
- Joan Jonas’ Good Night Good Morning which presents drawings, photographs, notebooks, oral histories, film screenings, performances, and a selection of the artist’s installations. Jonas continues to produce her most urgent work through immersive multimedia installations that address climate change and kinship between species. “Despite my interest in history,” she has said, “my work always takes place in the present.”
- Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, which is his last works to feature stuffed animals. The toys are clustered in a cellular arrangement of one “central mass” and 13 “satellites.” To avoid eliciting an emotional or sentimental response from viewers, Kelley sewed the animals face-in. They are surrounded by 10 brightly coloured, abstract sculptures the artist called “deodorizers,” which release a pine-scented mist into the air. By contrasting the degraded consequences of consumer excess with the slick, reductive forms of modernism, Kelley taunts the hierarchies between high art and mainstream culture, between obsessive hygiene and moral decline.
A favourite installation of mine can be found on Floor 2, 212 from Ja’Tovia Gary’ titled “The Giverny Suite”.
Filmed in Harlem, New York, and in Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France, THE GIVERNY SUITE is a cinematic poem that advocates for the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Employing techniques including hand-painted film animation and montage editing, Gary first developed the work during an artist residency in Giverny, where the gardens offered a space of respite.
Centrally featured are person-on-the-street interviews in which the artist approaches women at the intersection of Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard) and West 116th Street and asks, “Do you feel safe?” These interviews are interspersed with footage of singer Nina Simone, performer Josephine Baker, political activist Fred Hampton, and Diamond Reynolds recounting the killing of her boyfriend Philando Castile by police in 2016.
The cinematic piece is blanketed in a darkened gallery space. Take a moment to take a seat, close your eyes and let Nina Simone’s words wash over you. The gallery is quiet even though their maybe some hustle and bustle around the MOMA space. Try your best to hold your meditation as you listen closely to the music.
The installation also includes antique furniture as well as altars dedicated to the Yoruba deities Yemaya and Oshun. “Healing is at the root of the work,” Gary explains. “Making art is a transformative process that transmutes pain or trauma into something beautiful, useful, functional, instructive.”
Thirty Four Flavours 