Exhibition Opening – Somewhat Eternal, Love Is the Message and Avalanche
Join Institute of Modern Art for the opening of three new exhibitions from Darug/Sydney-based artist Justine Youssef, American artist Arthur Jafa, and Singaporean artist Dawn Ng.
Across video, textiles, and scent, Justine Youssef’s Somewhat Eternal reveals the manifold impacts of displacement and considers our complicity in reproducing these conditions. Exploring the maintenance of her matrilineal family’s rituals, Youssef considers broader cycles of dispossession and places belief in the alternatives and futures these cultural practices offer us.
In just seven-and-a-half minutes, Arthur Jafa’s roller-coaster montage video Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death encapsulates African American experience as a tale of resilience. It combines footage shot by Jafa—an artist with a long career as a cinematographer and director—with excerpts from films, newscasts, sports coverage, music clips, and citizen videos to create a poignant meditation on African American history, life, and identity.
Dawn Ng’s expansive practice deals with time, memory, and the ephemeral. For Avalanche, the artist crafted pigmented blocks of ice, then filmed them melting away. Compressing hours into minutes, Ng fast tracks this glacial decay while evoking calming waterfalls and collapsing ice shelves, turning entropy into eye candy.
Free entry, all welcome.