Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
Videos
Looking for Love (and Job)
2021A twisted Little Mermaid story in which a protagonist merman (Male figure with fish head) washes up on the shore of the Pacific coast in search of Love. The Merman, the alien species, encounters and interacts with different species in the new habitat. The work explores migration, job security, and the power and gender structure of contemporary society using a variety of everyday anecdotes.
Added on: August 31, 2022
Recycled Air
2020This work reflects upon the interconnectedness of our belief systems, ideas of procreation and extinction, empathy and emotions connected to maternity, all through the actions of pregnant men, chickens, and geese. As environmental disaster and systematic failures of our society continue, how do we locate and process our feelings during a time of apocalypse? The work navigates different issues surrounding the ideas of utopia and survival that operate according to limits and regulations placed upon our bodies, and further expands to investigate current environmental and existential failures and anxieties.
Added on: August 31, 2022
You're Every Song I Ever Sing
2019This experimental documentary uses interview transcriptions to create theatrical re-enactments of the life stories of older generations. By casting against (or on the diagonal from) the race, gender, sexual orientation and age of the bodies of the original storyteller, our sense of the identity and perspective of the storyteller shifts. As culturally constructed, our identities are mobile tho often perceived as more or less stable. How does age function as an element of our identities? What does it mean to say that the young can only imagine what it to be old and the elderly can only remember the days of their youth? As separatist movements, discrimination against difference, and the idea of border control further progress in our world, this piece reimagines the possibilities of identifying with “others” by abstracting the representation of identity and experimenting with the possibilities of dis-identifying with ourselves.
Added on: August 1, 2021
How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away
2018This karaoke installation invites viewers to participate by singing a long with popular songs inserted into a single channel video. The video takes the point of view of a travel essay (or home movie) of a dinosaur couple on a road-trip while in the midst of a mid-life crisis. The dinosaurs travel through a town in Texas famous for dinosaur fossils, which has created an infrastructure of dinosaur-related businesses in and around the town ranging from a theme park to the Creation Evidence Museum which promotes the idea that God created dinosaurs alongside of humans and other animals. The point of view is at some point reversed as the anthropomorphized dinosaurs look at and study the life style and cultural beliefs of rural Americana through the symbols and cultural tropes of the dinosaurs themselves. The existential conversation between the dinosaur couple touches on procreation and extinction, ideas of masculinity, maternity and the apocalypse.
Added on: June 29, 2018
Love in the Time of True Blue
2018The artist conducts an experiment termed “closeness-generating procedure,” a psychological procedure developed in 90’s to cultivate intimacy between two strangers. The procedure is performed by two strangers, in this case one of them being the artist, answering 36 questions that are designed to increase intimacy. Ten participants are sourced from various platforms including street flyers, word of mouth, and Craig’s list. Audio of the answers are juxtaposed with video of strange movements performed by the participants. The movements reveal themselves as an exercise routine the artist’s grandmother has been performing for the last half century. The videos are presented alongside a series of printed texts and short stories. The stories explore the artist’s grandmother’s failed marriage and her dedication to this particular exercise program in pursuit of the reclamation of a self; these stories are then intertwined with other parallel stories. This speculative documentary meditates on the notion of ideology, culture, and love.
Added on: June 29, 2018
Still Life with Fruits, Vegetables and a Chicken
2017Somewhat silly, existential conversations are presented through numerous children’s voices which mix together making it difficult to differentiate one from the other. The gender of the voices and whether the voice is human or computer generated is obscured throughout the video. The subject matter of these nonsensical and fanatical conversations include killing cockroaches, socializing at the grocery store, and the extinction of chickens. Bright and colorful images of macro views of sculptural installation made from mundane objects with hand-drawn animation create a playful backdrop to the idiosyncratic voice-overs. The abstract shapes, voice-overs, and disco music in the background create a moment of dissonance and false hopes.
Added on: June 29, 2018
Wake Me Up When It's Gold Again
2016The story starts off as a sci-fi narrative which freezes humans in a cryogenic container to preserve our civilization in the time of apocalypse with the hope of encountering new civilization many years after on earth. The narration quickly transforms into multiple voices narrating short letters to their friends discussing their feelings and hopes before going into the cryogenic containers. The images follow various people engaged in diverse absurd human activities including swimming as sharks, hitting a pizza piñata, and flushing nasal passages with a Neti Pot. The piece reflects the difficult summer of 2016 where waves of terror and police shootings dominated our news while the US presidential election was veering into strange territory. Also some people might call it just another “Skowhegan” video.
Added on: June 29, 2018
Untitled 2015/16, 2016
2016This work is an immersive audio installation with moving images functioning as a light source to illuminate the space. Audiences are invited to sit on wooden stools and benches surrounded by ferns and amber fossils of cockroaches. The audio combines multiple found narrations and texts performed by both human and computer-generated voices. The voice-overs start from President Obama’s 2016 state of the union address and jump across various subjects ranging from inherited trauma, the search for aliens, and sex robots. The topics almost seem unrelated to each other yet the combination of each element creates and reflects the idiosyncratic moments that build toward the year of a political tipping point.
Added on: June 29, 2018
No Body was Born on September
2015Multiple absurd stories and found stories are combined and presented one after another almost like a standup-comedy routine in this video. Voice-overs are narrated by various auto-generated computer voices of different ages and genders. Peculiar narratives are juxtaposed with collages of many found footages which generate eerily atmosphere. Mismatched narratives and images create confusion that seeks to shift the viewer’s assumptions and alter the imagination.
Added on: June 29, 2018
In Between an Elephant and Onions
2015Various found texts are combined to form a larger narrative of life on Planet Onion and the Onion’s adventure into outer space. The sources of found texts include George Orwell’s 1984, NASA astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller’s talk/video called We are dead stars, and Gary Shteyngart’s NYT article titled ‘Out of My Mouth Comes Unimpeachable Manly Truth’ - What I learned from watching a week of Russian TV. Existential pursuits and authoritarianism are humorously portrayed through absurd interactions of anthropomorphic onions.
Added on: August 31, 2022
Meet Me at Wikipedia
2015Three short stories about the birth and death of a Mahayana Buddhist Monk, an Arab air force pilot and the artist’s grandmother’s brother intertwine to create a conspiracy about the afterlife and the internet. The piece contemplates religious beliefs, space, and time.
Added on: June 29, 2018