Whitney Biennial
Even Better Than the Real Thing

[En anglais]

For detractors and defenders alike, the 2024 edition of the Whitney Biennial seemed to murmur rather than shout. Supposedly, it lacks controversy, splashy spectacle, or strident political critique. Yet, I wondered if critics were expressing ambivalence over the curatorial themes rather than over the works themselves. Curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, Even Better Than the Real Thing prefers to engage with its core theme of “authenticity” outside of the vehicle of mimetic or figurative artwork. The exhibition meditates on the abstractions of gender, race, and ability that shape our corporeal lives — or so the wall texts anxiously reminded me. Evincing an obvious skepticism over representation’s demands, the works of this biennial could sometimes make this framing appear quaint.

Perhaps these artists are tired of the disclaimers that attend “marginalized art.” Many works are about attrition itself, composed as they are of materials destined to disintegrate over time. Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White Dove Let Us Fly (2024) presents an edifice of amber that, by the time I saw it, had crumbled into giant shards. Outside, Kiyan Williams’s dirt-sculpted replica of the White House’s façade perilously topples. Lotus L. Kang varies this theme of deterioration by suggesting its transformative potential: her installation In Cascades (2023) features hanging, wide strips of film — what she calls “skins” — that will alter over time. If these works insist upon their own fragile materiality, they also seek to freshen our worn-out metaphors for describing a self or the histories that discipline us.