Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, March 18, 2022: Martine Syms, an American emerging artist (#1524)

Friday, March 18, 2022

Artist of the Day, March 18, 2022: Martine Syms, an American emerging artist (#1524)

Martine Syms (1988) is an American artist based in Los Angeles who works in publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her work focuses on identity and the portrayal of the self in relation to themes such as feminism and black culture. This is often explored through humour and social commentary. Syms coined the term "conceptual entrepreneur" in 2007 to characterize her practice.

Martine Syms was born in Los Angeles. She was raised with three siblings in the Altadena suburb of Los Angeles. She was home-schooled by her parents from age 7 through 12, and knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist. When discussing home-schooling, Syms comments: '“The area I grew up in didn’t have the best public schools and it was hard to get all of us into the same private school – for a lot of racist reasons from what it sounds like.”' Syms' mother was interested in art and writing, and her father was an amateur photographer. She attended a pre-college program called CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts) at CalArts.

In 2007 Syms received a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She obtained a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2017.

From 2007–2012 Syms co-directed Golden Age, an artist-run space in Chicago.

In 2015 Syms was included in the New Museum Triennial Surround Audience. In the same year her video Notes on Gesture was exhibited at Bridget Donahue Gallery in New York City and the Machine Project in Los Angeles. It explores the role of seemingly insignificant bodily gestures in the creation of identity.

Syms worked with Willo Perron and Associates to help write Kanye West's speech at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards where he announced his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential Election.

Syms presented the performance Misdirected Kiss at the Storm King Art Center in New York's Hudson Valley and the Broad Museum in Los Angeles in 2016. The work takes its title from the 1904 film The Misdirected Kiss. At times resembling a TED talk, the work picks apart issues of language and representation. In the same year her work was also displayed in a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London titled Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble. Included in this exhibition, was the Syms' video series Lessons.

In 2017 Syms showcased her work in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show was titled Projects 106: Martine Syms which centered around a feature-length film, Incense, Sweaters & Ice. She was also shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2017. Syms is the recipient of the 2017 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant. Syms joined the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts in September 2018. In the same year she won the Graham Foundation Fellowship for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She also received a Future Fields Commission in time-based media from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

Syms is the founder of Dominica Publishing, an artists' press dedicated to exploring black identity in contemporary art and visual culture.

The broad idea of the artist as an agent seeking financial self-determination runs throughout modern and contemporary art, most notably in works by Marcel Duchamp and Marcel Broodthaers but also Piero Manzoni, David Hammons, and Joe Scanlan. The idea was given its most explicit sanction in a text by Scanlan titled People in Trade, in which he outlines Conceptual Art's business potential:

"In the end, and quite ironically, so-called difficult artists like [Agnes] Martin and [David] Hammons have turned out to be much better economic models than their more celebrated counterparts could ever be. Their arcane interests, unique skills and often restrained production methods epitomize such concepts as personal branding, value adding, and just-in-time production philosophies, state of the art business innovations that they and other artists have never gotten credit for. Until now. The avant garde lives! Not because its more meaningful or radical than any other activity, but because it fills a legitimate market niche."

Syms work often explores contemporary black identity, queer theory, and the power of language through video, performance, writing, and other media. She typically includes contemporary media such as found footage in her work to express these themes. Footage is important to Syms as she explains that 'video is a concise medium for transmitting a lot of information'. She describes herself as a 'hoarder of "orphaned media"'. For example, devices such as smartphones take the role of tools for constructing identity. Syms claims that although she does not use social media herself, she enjoys exploring its purpose in self-constructed identities. When creating her work, one approach often taken by Syms is to use spaces such as galleries to create a collage of multi-media. She also incorporates a range of technical skills such as coding in which she is largely self taught in addition to taking classes at the Armoury Center for The Arts in Los Angeles. Syms also draws inspiration from satire, using parody and sarcasm to express messages in her art. She describes her working style as being led by the project and adapting her art throughout the creation process.

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