Martine Syms

Martine Syms, Borrowed Lady, 2016. Installation view at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Martine Syms, Borrowed Lady, 2016. Installation view at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Martine Syms, Borrowed Lady, 2016. Installation view at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Martine Syms, Borrowed Lady, 2016. Installation view at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

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Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles, USA) lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. Syms is most notably recognised for her practice that combines conceptual grit, humour and social commentary. Using a combination of video, installation and performance, often interwoven with explorations into technique and narrative, Syms examines representations of blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. Syms’s research-based practice frequently references and incorporates theoretical models concerning performed or imposed identities, the power of the gesture, and embedded assumptions concerning gender and racial inequalities. Recent exhibitions include Sadie Coles HQ, UK (2020); Secession, Austria (2019); ICA VCU, USA (2019); MoMA, USA (2017); and ICA London, UK (2016).

Project Description

Martine Syms’ video installation Borrowed Lady (2015) from Tate’s collection was presented at Tate Liverpool. Taking a cue from writer Samuel R. Delany's reflections on how feminine characters are constructed through the compositing of ideal physiological and psychological features, Syms draws from her archives to speculate on the influences on her actor's gestures. Syms’ own practice is also formed of conceptual and critical inheritances. Alongside Delaney, Borrowed Lady is also informed by seventeenth century physician John Bulwer's study of hand gestures and their meaning; philosopher Giorgio Agamben's impressions on cinema's recuperation of the politics of gesture; and scholar Alison Landsberg’s formulation of mass popular medias as "prosthetic" memory. Syms highlights how common these gestures are, while also commenting on how they have been appropriated and commercialised in branding and advertising aimed at White audiences.

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