This years’ edition of the Whitney Biennial—the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States—features seventy-one artists and collectives who work around some of today’s most pressing issues. Curators Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli entitled this eighty-first iteration Even Better Than the Real Thing, acknowledging that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complicating our understanding of what is real, and rhetoric around gender and authenticity is being used politically and legally to perpetuate transphobia and restrict bodily autonomy.

These developments are part of a long history of deeming people of marginalized race, gender, and ability as subhuman—less than real. In making this exhibition, they committed to amplifying the voices of artists who are confronting these legacies, and to providing a space where difficult ideas can be engaged and considered.

This Biennial is a gathering of artists who explore the permeability of the relationships between mind and body, the fluidity of identity, and the growing precariousness of the natural and constructed worlds around us. Whether through subversive humor, expressive abstraction, or non-Western forms of cosmological thinking, to name but a few of their methods, these artists demonstrate that there are pathways to be found, strategies of coping and healing to be discovered, and ways to come together even in a fractured time.

Exhibition guest curators: Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes.

Performance program guest curator: Taja Cheek.

Film program guest curators: Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Greg de Cuir Jr, and Zackary Drucker.

All programs are organized by Iles and Onli.

Members Preview Days: 14-18 March

For public: 20 March – 11 August

Venue: Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, USA

Opening Hours: 10:30am – 10pm

Here is the exhibitions’ artist list : 

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Dora Budor, Seba Calfuqueo, Demian DinéYazhi’, Torkwase Dyson, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jes Fan, Nikita Gale, ektor Garcia, Pippa Garner, Harmony Hammond, Sharon Hayes, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Suzanne Jackson, Isaac Julien, Lotus L. Kang, Mary Kelly, Carolyn Lazard, Dionne Lee, Ligia Lewis, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Cannupa Hanska Luger, K.R.M. Mooney, Dala Nasser, Diane Severin Nguyen, Karyn Olivier, B. Ingrid Olson, Eamon Ore-Giron, People Who Stutter Create (Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, JJJJJerome Ellis, Conor Foran, Kristel Kubart), Julia Phillips, Mavis Pusey, Maja Ruznic, Ser Serpas, Rose B. Simpson, P. Staff, Clarissa Tossin, Tourmaline, Charisse Pearlina Weston, Kiyan Williams, Carmen Winant, Takako Yamaguchi, Constantina Zavitsanos

Film Program artist list :

Siku Allooloo, Seba Calfuqueo, Christopher Harris, Miranda Haymon, Ho Tzu Nyen, Yasmine Anlan Huang, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Aron Kantor, Kite, Gbenga Komolafe and Tee Park, Jenni Laiti, Shuang Li, Simon Liu, Nyala Moon, Niillasaš-Jovnna Máreha Juhani Sunná Máret – Sunna Nousuniemi, Edward Owens, Sydney Frances Pascal, Raqs Media Collective, Riar Rizaldi, Penelope Spheeris, Lada Suomenrinne, Alisi Telengut, Chanelle Tyson, Zulaa Urchuud

Performance Program artist list :

Holland Andrews, Debit, JJJJJerome Ellis, Sarah Hennies, Alex Tatarsky

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