Charlene K. Lau

Charlene K. Lau is an art historian, critic, and curator who has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Parsons School of Design, The New School and Performa Biennial. Her writing has been published in Artforum, Atlantic.com, the Brooklyn Rail, Canadian Art, Frieze, Fashion Theory and Journal of Curatorial Studies, among others.

Taking performance as form and content, Williams interjects Black bodies into the canon of live art, extending multitudinous lineages: classical ballet, modern dance, performance art, and theater. This tidy show of performance on video, Xerox collages, and sculpture (all 2021) plays out like an experiment in choreography...
Kandis Williams, Line Intersection Sublimation: Uptown Downtown satisfactions of Swan Lake, east west Pavlova to Mezentseva, Madonna Whore Balanchine to Dunham., 2021. © Kandis Williams. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York.
In a time now regularly described as “challenging” or “unprecedented,” it’s tricky to find balance between the uplifting, or even saccharine—phrases like “We’re all in this together” come to mind—and the downright horrifying. Director and editor Orian Barki and artist Meriem Bennani’s animated Instagram series 2 Lizards locates the middle while speaking to the volley of emotions activated by COVID-19.
2 Lizards
Focusing on the moving image, the show is an antidote to viewing room fatigue and ill-begotten exhibitions made virtual. More importantly, it presents the vicissitudes of contemporary Black life in a world rife with racial injustice, while responding to the disproportionate impact of the virus on historically racialized, marginalized, and underserved communities.
Thenjiwe Nikki Nkosi, Suspension (feat. Nonku Phiri and Dion Monti) (Sierra Brooks, Daisha Cannon, Luci Collins, Olivia Courtney, Naveen Daries, Dominique Dawes, Nia Dennis, Makarri Doggette, Daiane dos Santos, Gabby Douglas, Dianne Durham, Yesenia Ferrera, Annia Hatch, Ashleigh Heldsinger, Laurie Hernandez, Kiya Johnson, Dipa Karmakar, Jennifer Khwela, Rankoe Mammule, Sibongile Mjekula, Betty Okino, Elizabeth Price, Caitlin Rooskrantz, Tasha Schwikert, Jamison Sears, Stella Umeh, Gabby Wilson, Corrine Wright)​, 2020. Digital video, sound, duration: 6:45 min. Courtesy the artist and Stevenson Gallery.
As the audience filed into the space, sounds of nature—squeaking, mooing—filled the air. Once we were seated, Black and Huxtable entered the room in taupe suits, acting as prosecutor and defense attorney, respectively.
Hannah Black and Juliana Huxtable, Penumbra, 2019. Courtesy Performance Space New York. Photo: Rachel Papo.
Brazilian performance artist Berna Reale’s first exhibition in New York features a series of photographs and videos centered around her creation of non-binary character “Bi.”
Berna Reale, Everybody looks at the cats # 02, 2018. © Berna Reale. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler.
Billed as an exhibition, Refiguring Binaries offers a looping selection of 18 screen-based works by ten non-male-identifying artists, who engage with digital technologies as old as animation and GIFs, and as new as the latest developments in virtual and augmented reality.
Installation view, Refiguring Binaries, Pioneer Works, New York, 2019. Photo: © Dan Bradica.
Recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, Ian Cheng’s epic “live simulation” trilogy, Emissary (2015 – 17) is installed in its entirety for the first time at both MoMA PS1 and live-streamed on Twitch, a social video platform for gamers.
Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks At Perfection, 2015 - 16. Live simulation and story, infinite duration. Courtesy the artist, Pilar Corrias, Standard (Oslo).
Comprising the work of over forty artists and filmmakers, curator Chrissie Iles’s massive undertaking speaks comprehensively to the expanded field of cultural production, where the cinematic moves beyond its disciplinary boundaries and unites art with lived experience.
Installation view of Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 28, 2016 – February 5, 2017). Stan VanDerBeek, Movie Mural, (1968) E.2016.1545. Photography by Ronald Amstutz.

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