“What if we were all actors in a film in perpetual production?” asks American artist Martine Syms. “What if “reality” was written by images?” Total is a new solo show that embarks to answer these existential questions through a series of objects-turned-editions that replicate the artist’s Los Angeles-based studio.
On view at Paris’ Lafayette Anticipations, the show marks Syms’ first retrospective exhibition in France, and will present a meditation on consumption as a form of performance and performance as a means of consumption. By transforming her own studio objects as editions available for purchase, Syms probes into the ways in which material objects act as extensions of identity, as well as the mechanisms that drive these desires.
The show is mapped out across shopping bags, t-shirts, films, installation and various studio items that Syms uses to explore themes pertaining Blackness, spirituality and feminist history. Total will go on view in Paris on October 16 and will be complemented by a special collaboration the artist created with P.A.M. (Perks And Mini).
Lafayette Anticipations
9 Rue du Plâtre,
75004 Paris, France
