The starting point poses what is real in a time in which the term alternative reality has already been imposed.
The caretaker on this sixth floor of the Whitney Museum (north wing) acts as a true cicerone and passionately illustrates to the audience that this wall, as the hours have passed, from morning to afternoon, and with the increase in temperature, “ “It has melted a little and has more cracks.” That is, he transforms into a true mutant.
That work is signed by Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, born in Los Angeles in 1990, descendant of Salvadorans and one of the 71 artists and groups participating in the 81st edition of the biennial of this New York museum (with spectacular views) that opens on Wednesday.
Aparicio's creation is titled Paloma blanca, let us fly and is made with amber or resin that over time “will move” based on light and ambient heat. This material has been extracted from trees that were imported to Southern California in the 1950s and 1960s, in parallel with the arrival of Central Americans and Mexicans included in labor programs. Los Angeles then began to uproot or transplant them because they lacked space on the sidewalks for them to develop their roots, which coincided with the deportations of foreigners.
From all this emerges a monumental sculpture in the form of a wall, with a hollow interior, as can be seen from its current cracks – they will not be the same as those of tomorrow –, where documents of the massive killings carried out by the military in El Salvador during 1932. Not only does it move, but it will eventually disappear, as a metaphor for human bodies, and the documents will be more visible.
This sense of “material precariousness,” as curator Chrissie Iles defines it, is one of the factors illustrated by the subtitle of this biennial call: Even Better Than the Real Thing.
In addition to material precariousness, this subtitle is reflected in different ways. “There are many trans artists in this exhibition, or queer, or queer ideas, because it is not only about gender, but it is about something broader conceptual,” Iles emphasizes.
“We are in a moment of transition. In the nineties, people were anxious about homosexuals, and today, about transsexuals. There is uncertainty when things change and, probably in twenty years, new generations will have absorbed this evolution. “This show captures this shift towards a new era and a new way of thinking,” she says.
“We question what is real, since, in a way, the United States is a fiction. It always has been, but today artificial intelligence, which accelerates everything, really modifies our understanding of what is fiction and what is real in terms of gender or the climate emergency,” he insists.
On the three floors there are sounds, paintings, sculptures and videos by numerous artists in their thirties who break with the nostalgia of films like Oppenheimer or Barbie.
“It is a psychoanalytic exposition – points out Iles – when the meaning of reality has been turned around.”
