NEW YORK, NY.- Since relocating to California's Mojave desert in 2013, artist MPA (b. 1980; Redding, CA) has been immersed in a broad inquiry into the potential colonization of Mars, often known as the red planet. In this multi-part exhibition the artist looks at Mars as a place for settlement and a resource for our own planet, as well as a site of possible human origin. MPA’s research considers unconventional sources such as mythology, psychic accounts, and personal narratives, as credible authorities. By reflecting more generally on histories of colonization, RED IN VIEW raises questions of militarism and patriarchy, prompting us to examine our own, often subconscious, colonizing behaviors.
RED IN VIEW is organized by Jay Sanders, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Curator of Performance, and Greta Hartenstein, Senior Curatorial Assistant, with Allie Tepper, Curatorial Project Assistant.
Selected works on view were commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston for the exhibition THE INTERVIEW: Red, Red Future, organized by Dean Daderko, curator.
MPA (b. 1980) has explored a range of meditative, durational, theatrical, and actionist modes of performance to engage "the energetic" as a potential material in live work. Enriched with ritual, her performances and installations critically examine behaviors of power in personal and social spaces. In previous works, she has proposed questions on the global arms race, patriarchy as governance, and the dysfunctional union of art and capitalist commodity. MPA's work has been exhibited at the Swiss Institute, New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico. Her dynamic body of work Directing Light onto Fist of Father (2011) at Leo Koenig Projekte in New York, combined a looping 16 mm film and a plaster cast of MPA’s father's fist in an installation that incited three durational performances. In Trilogy (o) (2012), presented at Human Resources in Los Angeles, NASA sound recordings of dying stars accompanied thirty-one photographs of Nike war missiles arranged as a moon calendar. A frequent collaborator, MPA is a visible muse for many contemporary photographers, painters, and performers. After receiving a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2013, MPA relocated from New York City to Twentynine Palms, CA to continue her research with somatic practices. Since 2013, MPA has focused these studies with research on the potential human colonization of Mars. This work was first presented as THE INTERVIEW: Red Red Future (2016) at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. RED IN VIEW, her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, presents the second episode in this ongoing project.
Artist credits: Davida Nemeroff, Omar Wilson, M. Cay Castagnetto, Rachelle Sawatsky, Donnie Cervantes, Cameron Crone, Trina Merry, Lydia Okrent, Mariana Valencia, Makayla Bailey, and Rose Wonderfabulous.
