The practice of Martine Syms (*1988) is distinguished by its boundlessness: her subjects flow across media—publishing, moving image, photography, installation, performance and software programming—dissolving the lines between them. Combining her distinct sense of humor with sharp-witted observations and social commentary, the Los Angeles-based artist moves seamlessly between elaborating fictions and a research-based practice.
Martine Syms, The Non-Hero, 2021 (still)
Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
For Real For Real
Group Exhibition
daadgalerie, Berlin
Through July 27, 2025
How can we, as workers of the imaginary, recognize the significance and the poetics of being when all manners of racism, war and patriarchal violence redirect the gaze from our indisputable presence? For Real For Real gathers together artists working to bring us closer to the particularities, obsessions, peculiarities, playfulness, obscurity, wonderment of a single one doing life, being alive, loving, seeing, making, breaking, collapsing, doing and doing in the wild wilderness of now. The exhibition is presented by The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII), an interdisciplinary cultural laboratory founded by the poet Claudia Rankine, in collaboration with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and in conversation with Kevin Quashie’s book Black Aliveness: A Poetics of Being.
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