AGENDA
is Amalia Ulman’s powerpoint presentation about Privilege, her latest online performance.
In
AGENDA Ulman uses poetic language to narrate self experimentation with female hormones and the effects of excess estrogen
in a body trapped between the carpeted floors and ceiling tiles of her DTLA office -a tight structure of vertical structures,
linearity and clocks. This dreamlike storyline later develops into a series of cons and scams, economies of appearances and
the rise and fall of Bob The Pigeon, an ode to a working class hero which finishes with pessimistic spiritual notes that the
author recognizes as selfish, recognizing the entitlement of her nihilism, escapism and ability to complain to carry its own
privilege—a position of criticality not accessible to all.
Bio
Amalia Ulman (b. 1989) is an artist with an
office in downtown L.A. Born in Argentina but raised in Spain, she studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins in London. Her
works, which are primarily voiced in the first person, blur the distinction between the artist and object of study, often
creating humorous, gentle deceptions, while exploring class imitation and the relationship between consumerism and identity.
In addition to video, sculpture and installation work, her multidisciplinary practice has involved the use of social media,
magazine photoshoots, interviews, self-promotion and brand endorsements as tools for the fabrication of fictional narratives.
Ulman’s performance Excellences & Perfections was archived by Rhizome and the New Museum (New York) and exhibited at the
Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery (London). Her most recent works are the video essay Annals of Private History (Frieze
Live, 2015), and Privilege (online performance, 2016) and its subsequent solo shows: Labour Dance at Arcadia Missa (London),
Reputation at New Galerie (Paris), Dignity at James Fuentes (New York), Intolerance at BARRO (Buenos Aires), Monday Cartoons
at Deborah Schamoni (Munich), Atchoum! at Galerie Sympa (Figeac) and NEW WORLD 1717 at Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai). Her
last video work Buyer Walker Rover Aka Then There was premiered in China at Art Wuzhen, a biennial curated by Feng Boyi.
About her work
A self-described transatlantic expat, a spirit of national nomadism and outsider cultural
inquisitiveness inform her practice.
Her works are primarily voiced in the first person, often blurring the distinction
between the artist and object of study. The aesthetic is clean, minimal and translucent. The recurring imagery evokes mundane
prosaicness with an undertone of possession, seduction, anxiety and insecurity.
Ubiquitous, everyday objects are observed
as unearthed treasures concealing exotic truths, viewed from a furtive, almost voyeuristic vantage point. In a multidisciplinary
manner, she charts a soft-toned exploration of the relationships between consumerism and identity, class imitation and social
deception, altruism and orientalism, with a particular focus on the idea of “cute” and “pretty”.
She uses the aesthetic
languages of the middle, its ‘sublime ordinariness’, as a mechanism to explore the intersection of class and aesthetics at
its most salient point: taste.
It is the finger-pointing and moralizing of ‘pretty’ that perhaps allows us to see that
Ulman’s work is remarkable in that its reception is marked by a conflicted sense of pleasure and unease and even shame and
hypocrisy.
Such ideas are expanded in her work, whose light touch asks not only how aesthetic consumption aligns one
to a particular class position, but also, how a position of criticality is itself a space of privilege.
transmedialekunst.comamaliaulman.eu