2018 Digital Art Curatorial Exhibition Program - Sisyphus Version 20.18
Condemned for eternity to repeat the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down and have to start all over again, the Greek mythological figure Sisyphus serves as a point of departure for the group exhibition Sisyphus Ver. 20.18. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, the French philosopher Albert Camus infers that Sisyphus’ struggle itself is enough to fill his heart, and one must imagine Sisyphus happy. By framing the realization of his hopeless struggle as passion for life instead, Sisyphus is thereby re-presented and elevated as absurd hero. Similarly, the works selected for this group exhibition, offer us new ways to look at contemporary issues and positions of ambivalence that otherwise remain complex conundrums at their best, or depressive burdens at their worst...
Embodying the role of artist, these eleven workers in various implicit and explicit ways confront the unifying theme and shared experience of redundancy found within the producer-product-consumer interconnection through works that engage the politics and technologies of labor. Merely a sample of a much larger set of views and struggles, these works give us insight into how present-day workers and cultural producers (including artists) address, dissect and/or re-construct the meaning (lessness) of life and charge these positions with power by recognizing and re-claiming the value in both the human body and in human labor. Essentially, taking the ruthless realities of capitalism and using them as fuel to envision a different future and disrupt the status quo. As creator, producer, or laborer, they each reflect their unique position(s): questioning the value of their own im/material labor in relation to history, memory, technology and system.
At a time clouded with uncertainty and anxiety due to global socio-political, financial, and environmental upheaval, utilizing Sisyphus as an example allows us to open up to new and different possibilities of reading and re-imagining what is considered absurd, futile or obsolete. It is in this very moment that we seek with urgency, through this exhibition, to re-frame conditions and symptoms as agency and potentialities, as way to digress or transgress and forge purpose and affirmation. Using video, performance, installation, sound, text and digital media, these artists share their experiences, concerns, and methods of coping. Collapsing personal and universal, local and regional with global, as well as past, present and future, their artworks render visible how individuals and communities subvert and invert the flow of capital, the im/material value of objects, the division of labor, and the role of art/artist, altogether drawing attention to the pivotal moment we all currently live in and face. An amalgamation pointing to our ability to recognize the absurdity in life (and labor and capital), to then carve out our own meaning and raison d'être, and under our own terms.
‘Sisyphus Version 20.18’