A number of attendees through the 12 March press preview of the 2024 Whitney Biennial—Even Higher Than the Actual Factor (20 March-11 August), curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli—remarked on how understated this version of the exhibition is, notably in contrast with the 2017 and 2019 iterations that have been rocked by controversies and protests. It’s so understated, it appears, that considered one of its most pointed feedback on present occasions went largely unnoticed, together with by Iles and Onli: a large-scale neon work by the artist Demian DinéYazhi’ that sometimes glints with the phrases “free Palestine”.
DinéYazhi’, who’s a member of the Diné clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water) and relies in Portland, Oregon, premised the work on three stanzas of political poetry they composed earlier than the occasions of seven October 2023 and the Israel-Hamas struggle. The neon, titled we should cease imagining apocalypse/genocide + we should think about liberation (2024), is put in going through a wall of home windows overlooking the West Aspect Freeway and the Hudson River. It’s typical of what artwork historian Josie Roland Hodson describes within the biennial catalogue’s entry for DinéYazhi’ as their “observe of decolonial resistance and institutional critique”.
More often than not, the work’s illuminated textual content encourages viewers and readers to cease envisioning worsening, apocalyptic circumstances and to as an alternative “pursue + predict + think about routes towards liberation!”. Seemingly sporadically, a smattering of letters throughout the three stanzas of neon textual content go darkish, earlier than the association is reversed and the one letters illuminated spell out “free Palestine”.
The fleeting political assertion was first reported by Artnet Information, and a Whitney spokesperson confirmed to The New York Occasions that the museum was unaware of it: “The museum didn’t know of this refined element when the work was put in.” The spokesperson added: “The Biennial has lengthy been a spot the place modern artists handle well timed issues, and the Whitney is dedicated to being an area for artists’ conversations.”
The artist instructed the Occasions the work was impressed partially by their good friend Klee Benally, a Diné activist who died in December, including: “The piece in its closing kind and because it at present exists as we speak is a response to being located inside settler colonial establishments.”
Artists making works that seem to handle the Israel-Hamas struggle and the establishments exhibiting them have often come beneath strain, ensuing within the cancellation of exhibitions, residencies, public programmes and extra, typically adopted by a backlash of artists and lenders withdrawing works or institutional leaders stepping down in scandal, protest or solidarity. Many observers of the artwork world are turning their eyes to the Whitney to see what extra could transpire now that DinéYazhi’’s gesture has been revealed.
