Who Speaks for the Oceans?

Miho Hatori, Do Whales Dream of Electric Human? (video still), 2022. Video installation. Courtesy the artist.

September 1 – December 9, 2022

PRESS: New Yorker | Arts Gazing | The Ticker

On September 1, 2022, Who Speaks for the Oceans? opens at Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, City University of New York. The exhibition proposes new and challenging ways to shift our understandings of and relationships to whales and other nonhuman animals. Through over fifteen interdisciplinary artworks in video, installation, painting, tapestry, music, performance, and more, Who Speaks for the Oceans? analyzes epistemological and historical knowledge built around what we think we know about life in the ocean through the charismatic “whale song.” As we approach a crucial moment concerning the condition of our planet, listening to whale vocalizations and other marine creatures can bring us closer to understanding their needs and encouraging action towards healthier stewardship of the oceans.

Many historic representations of ocean life have been informed by colonial, racialized, gendered, and terra-centric conventions alongside the production of nature, which will be exposed and critiqued through the multiple perspectives of an international and intergenerational group of artists. Traversing a polyvocal marine geography, the artists in Who Speaks for the Oceans? encourage listening beyond normative patterns of consumption. They also consider how technology, assumed to be indexical and scientific, has informed imaginary and fantastical perspectives of non-terrestrial worlds. Some artists in the exhibition play with such perspectives and offer alternative future projections, while others reflect on and amplify overlooked histories.

The first recorded whale vocalizations were publicly released in 1970 through the LP Songs of the Humpback Whale. These recordings were widely distributed through National Geographic as the largest environmental record pressing of all time. They heavily influenced artists and activists alike, while introducing human listeners to empathic perspectives of ocean life. The recording spearheaded the Save the Whales campaign, was played on the floor of Congress, and in-part, helped to ban commercial whaling in the United States. If listening to such sounds inspired monumental change in the 1970s, what can we continue to learn from this history today? Who Speaks for the Oceans? encourages revisiting our relatively new position as stewards of the planet to reimagine creative ways in which listening to one another can lead to action and bring forth equitable futures.

Artists: Ant Farm, Ursula Biemann, Else Bostelmann, Myrlande Constant, Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle, Pia Dehne, Miho Hatori, Marguerite Humeau, Will E. Jackson, Joan Jonas, Dominique Knowles, Alvin Lucier, Chris Marker and Mario Ruspoli, Josèfa Ntjam, and Roger Payne

An illustrated booklet designed by Bryan Chu and Eline Mul including essays by the curators and extended artwork descriptions are available for free at the gallery and online here.

Who Speaks for the Oceans? is curated by Alaina Claire Feldman, Director and Curator of Mishkin Gallery and David Gruber, Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences. Support for this exhibition has been provided by the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. This exhibition is made possible with support from Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States, with support from the French Ministry of Culture, Institut français, Ford Foundation, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, CHANEL, and ADAGP. Special thanks to Project CETI.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022

Casa São Roque – Centro de Arte, 2019.

From May 21, 2022 through January 31, 2023 Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) is partnering with the art center Casa São Roque in Porto, Portugal to present an extensive exhibition devoted to Andy Warhol and his influence on several generations of photographers, filmmakers, painters, musicians and multi-media artists.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022 places Andy Warhol’s work and his contributions to the development of experimental art, media, and critical art discourse in conversation with contemporary artists, while also exposing the pioneering Pop artist to a new generation in Porto. The exhibition attempts to generate new possibilities for thinking about Warhol’s approach to image production and appropriation, commodity and icon fetishism, the social life of famous and marginalized people alike, and how the artist seamlessly moved between media throughout his career. The consequences of such thinking are further considered and contradicted through other artists’ responses.

A significant portion of the exhibition at Casa São Roque revolves around a collection of Warhol’s 38 Polaroids from 1972–1986 and 30 black and white gelatin silver prints from the 70s and 80s which were gifted to the Mishkin Gallery directly by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts through their Photographic Legacy Program to expand scholarship on his work. This is their debut in Portugal and their first time on view in Europe. The last major exhibition of Warhol’s work in Porto was the traveling exhibition Andy Warhol: A Factory at Serralves Museum in 2000, yet there is an entire generation of people in Porto who have never seen Warhol’s work locally until now.

As indicated in the title, the exhibition extends beyond Warhol and includes several new commissions. The exhibition is comprised of contemporary artworks that respond to and contradict ideas about Warhol and his collaborations. Rather than focus strictly on topics such as sequence and repetition, commercialism and ambition, queerness and fetishization of the body, and social networks, the exhibition is organized so that the viewer may fluidly approach any number of these topics in different ways through multiple artistic perspectives.

Included in the exhibition is Jonas Mekas’ cinematic portrait of Warhol in Scenes of the Life Of Andy Warhol (1982), John Miller’s Middle of the Day photographs, three films by Jeff Preiss including the new Welcome to Jordan (2022), Tony Cokes’ film essay on the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson Untitled (mj, the symptom) (2020), recent paintings by Anna Ostoya (2022), abstract Polaroids by Eileen Quinlan (2022), new commissions by Portuguese artists Sara Graça and Pedro Magalhães, and works from the Casa São Roque collection including photographs by Augusto Alves da Silva and Robert Mapplethorpe. Ephemeral materials such as newspaper articles, magazine covers, and publications related to Warhol’s work will also be included to add to the historical social and public understanding of the work.

Public programs will include a lecture by Portuguese photography scholar Susana Lourenço Marques (Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade do Porto) and a lecture by art historian Inesa Brasiske on the relationship between Warhol and Mekas.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022 is co-curated by Alaina Claire Feldman (Director and Curator, Mishkin Gallery) and Barbara Piwowarska (Artistic Director, Casa São Roque).

A booklet with a text by the curators and a full exhibition checklist is available for download here.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972-2022, Installation view. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2022.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972-2022, Installation view. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2022.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972-2022, Installation view. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2022.

Anna Ostoya, Memorabilia, 2021/∞. Warhol, People and Things: 1972-2022, Installation view.

Warhol, People and Things: 1972-2022, Installation view. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2022.