Exhibition Review

Artforum Critics’ Pick: S/Election: Democracy, Citizenship, Freedom

2016

Image from Artforum Critics’ Pick: S/Election: Democracy, Citizenship, Freedom
Bibliographic Reference

“S/Election: Democracy, Citizenship, Freedom,” curated by Erin Cristovale, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (December 2016) Artforum: Critics’ Picks 

Offering a curatorial selection as unexpected as the outcome of the recent presidential election, the mixed-media and socially engaged works by thirty-two contemporary artists in this exhibition straddle binaries that stem from democracy, citizenship, and freedom: obedience/rebellion, citizen/alien, and fixed/fluid. The most nuanced pieces are those that offer an opportunity to make a choice: Margaret Noble’s Index of Fear, 2015, is an interactive media archive where one can sift through an old filing drawer and pick out sounds to play that, according to a corresponding list of tangible fears, convey feelings of “futility,” “fiscal,” and “forgotten,” among other categories.

-Excerpt