Easy Listening: Martine Syms

On the occasion of Artspace’s current exhibition Potentially Yours, The Coming Community, exhibiting artist Martine Syms will present her performative lecture, Misdirected Kiss.

Previously presented in the US, Canada and the UK, this iteration of the work will mark its first time being performed in the Asia-Pacific region. Misdirected Kiss tells a story about language, movement, and performance as observed in black female entertainers.  Akin to Notes on Gesture, the four-channel video exhibited at Artspace, much of Syms’ practice deploys fragments of social, televisual and cinematic media to tease out popular culture’s use of the black body as a ‘carrier of gestures’, both racialised and gendered.

Easy Listening Talks in Contemporary Art and Culture is a collaborative project by ARTSPACE, Elam School of Fine Arts and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.