Martine Syms

Martine Syms. Photo: Steven Traylor

 

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.

 

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Syms’ film and video works often center around digital versions of herself. We leave traces of our databodies all over the internet; Syms constructs characters and portraits from these fragments. She Mad (2015–21) is a conceptual sitcom series that stars the artist in the role of Martine, a graphic designer trying to gain a foothold in Los Angeles’ creative industry. One episode covers the pop artist Lil Nas X’s viral “Life Story” TikTok videos; using the same app features—video effects, overlay texts and background music—The Non-Hero (2021) narrates a hero’s journey of success, depression and loneliness. Using humor and satire, Syms references and incorporates theoretical models concerning performed or imposed identities, the power of gesture and embedded assumptions concerning gender and racial inequalities.

Her video Notes on Gesture (2015) features artist and actor Diamond Stingily performing Black femininity through a series of repeated movements, interspersed with title-card texts of hypothetical situations and snippets of spoken phrases and quotes. Syms has cited as inspirations the seventeenth-century physician John Bulwer’s textbook of hand gestures; Giorgio Agamben’s essay “Notes on Gesture,” discussing film’s political nature due to its ability to record and contain movement; and Black science fiction author Samuel R. Delany’s writing about the medieval poetic trope of female characters possessing qualities borrowed from different women—composites of idealized traits. In Syms’ contemporary adaptation of this borrowed-lady concept, the visual and aural gestures performed by the actor are a composite of movements and language associated with Black women from pop culture, memes, Vines and personal memories and photographs of family recalled by the artist and Stingily in collaboration.

Lessons I-CLXXX (2014–18) is an epic film poem composed of 180 visual cantos, each thirty seconds long, the approximate length of a commercial. The format was inspired by Kevin Young’s book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, in which the writer theorizes the passing down of Black cultural traditions as “lessons.” For her project, Syms has devised her own lessons of the Black radical tradition, claiming and adding on images, gestures and ephemera from her personal archive of created works and found footage.

The collage of images and texts in the wall work Misdirected Kiss (2016) resembles a computer screen overlaid with dozens of open windows—as if glimpsing an individual’s internet browsing and bookmarking. In 2016, Syms delivered a series of multimedia performance lectures titled “Misdirected Kiss,” in which she talked through the presentation of Black women’s bodies, while a projection displayed her computer desktop as she dragged and clicked through audio files, images and texts, populating the screen with eBay searches, Vines, GIFs, digital books, quotes, memes, video clips, screenshots, images of Black women, strangers, celebrities and personal photographs. Syms presents a compilation of what the cultural historian Alison Landsberg, whose text can be seen in the collage, refers to as “prosthetic memory”: the claiming of historical events that may not have been experienced personally, but which become a part of the collective memory due to the viral dissemination of mass and social media—the private feeling of public memories. 

Syms’ solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2017 was anchored by her film Incense Sweaters & Ice (2017). The film follows three protagonists—Mrs. Queen Esther Bernetta White, née Palmer; Girl; and WB—as they navigate the dramas of surveillance, moving between looking, being looked at and remaining unseen. Their narratives unfold across three cities: Los Angeles, California, St. Louis, Missouri, and Clarksdale, Mississippi. Set in the afterimage of the Great Migration, each of the characters responds to visibility differently. Syms also built an augmented reality app that expanded the edges of the film.

In 2022, Syms wrote and directed The African Desperate, her first narrative feature. Released by MUBI, the film tracks one very long summer day at a heady and heated MFA program in upstate New York. The African Desperate was the closing night film of New Directors/New Films 2022 and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2023.

 

Martine Syms: Aphrodite’s Beasts
Fridericianum, Kassel, July 3, 2021–February 20, 2022
Courtesy the artist and Fridericianum

 

Works
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Video
97 mins

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
What do I need most right now?, 2023

Martine Syms
What do I need most right now?, 2023
Mixed media
165.1 × 106.7 cm | 65 × 42 inches

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Cotton and aluminum
165.1 × 106.7 cm | 65 × 42 inches

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
DED, 2021

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Digital video, color, with sound
15:35 mins

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020

Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020
Three-channel video
8 mins, looped
Installation view, Martine Syms: Grio College, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, 2022
Photo: Olympia Shannon

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Misdirected Kiss, 2016

Martine Syms
Misdirected Kiss, 2016
Printed adhesive vinyl wall covering
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Martine Syms: Grio College, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, 2022
Photo: Olympia Shannon

Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Video, color, with sound
69 mins

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
She's Weird But She's Cute, 2023

Martine Syms
She's Weird But She's Cute
Archival pigment print
106.7 × 165.1 cm | 42 × 65 inches

Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment, 2023

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment
Archival pigment print
106.7 × 165.1 cm | 42 × 65 inches

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Four-channel video installation, color, with sound
6:59 mins, looped
Installation View, Made in L.A., 2016: a, the, though, only, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2016

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters, 2022–23

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters
Painted steel chair, woven polyester strap, laser-cut paper and cardboard, Orafol vinyl with permanent adhesive and tape
104.1 × 78.7 × 78.7 cm | 41 × 31 × 31 inches

More views
Martine Syms
Martine Syms
That’s right women, plural, it’s not a typo, 2024

Martine Syms
That’s right women, plural, it’s not a typo
Photographic print and oil stick on Fabriano paper
102.97 × 106.68 cm | 40 1/2 × 42 inches

Martine Syms
Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017
Single-channel video, color, continuously looping, inset in MDF pedestal mount
55.88 × 127.00 × 74.30 cm
22 × 50 × 29.25 inches

More views
Details
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Video
97 mins

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022 (film still)

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022 (film still)

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022 (film still)

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022 (film still)

Martine Syms
The African Desperate, 2022
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
What do I need most right now?, 2023
Mixed media
165.1 × 106.7 cm | 65 × 42 inches

Martine Syms
What do I need most right now?, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023 (detail)

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023 (detail)

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023 (detail)

Martine Syms
I Bought The Ugliest Suit in Thailand & Was Too Proud Not To Wear It, 2023
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Cotton and aluminum
165.1 × 106.7 cm | 65 × 42 inches

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I loved everything

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I loved everything (detail)

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I loved everything (detail)

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
I loved everything (detail)

Martine Syms
I loved everything, 2023
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Digital video, color, with sound
15:35 mins

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
DED, 2021 (video still)

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
DED, 2021 (video still)

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
DED, 2021 (video still)

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
DED, 2021 (video still)

Martine Syms
DED, 2021
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020
Three-channel video
8 mins, looped
Installation view, Martine Syms: Grio College, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, 2022
Photo: Olympia Shannon

Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020 (installation view)

Martine Syms
Ugly Plymouths, 2020
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Misdirected Kiss, 2016
Printed adhesive vinyl wall covering
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Martine Syms: Grio College, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, 2022
Photo: Olympia Shannon

Martine Syms
Misdirected Kiss, 2016
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Video, color, with sound
69 mins

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017 (film still)

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017 (film still)

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017 (film still)

Martine Syms
Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 2017
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
She's Weird But She's Cute
Archival pigment print
106.7 × 165.1 cm | 42 × 65 inches

Martine Syms
She's Weird But She's Cute, 2023
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment
Archival pigment print
106.7 × 165.1 cm | 42 × 65 inches

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment, 2023
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment

Martine Syms
Lord Increase My Bewilderment, 2023
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Four-channel video installation, color, with sound
6:59 mins, looped
Installation View, Made in L.A., 2016: a, the, though, only, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2016

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016 (video still)

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016 (video still)

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016 (video still)

Martine Syms
SHE MAD: Laughing Gas, 2016
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters
Painted steel chair, woven polyester strap, laser-cut paper and cardboard, Orafol vinyl with permanent adhesive and tape
104.1 × 78.7 × 78.7 cm | 41 × 31 × 31 inches

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters, 2022–23
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters, 2022–23
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters (detail)

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters, 2022–23
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters (detail)

Martine Syms
Aunty (37) / John Waters, 2022–23
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
That’s right women, plural, it’s not a typo
Photographic print and oil stick on Fabriano paper
102.97 × 106.68 cm | 40 1/2 × 42 inches

Martine Syms
That’s right women, plural, it’s not a typo, 2024
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017
Single-channel video, color, continuously looping, inset in MDF pedestal mount
55.88 × 127.00 × 74.30 cm
22 × 50 × 29.25 inches

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017 (video still)

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017
Martine Syms
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017 (installation view)

Martine Syms
Lessons LXXV, 2017
Details
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Current and Upcoming
Martine Syms
Martine Syms, Loser Back Home, installation view, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, 2023
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer

Martine Syms
Total
Lafayette Anticipations, Paris
Through February 9, 2025

In her first survey in France, Syms invites visitors into a total work of art engaging with the theater of the everyday and the roles we play in it. Engaging with both the idea of a survey and the “total” found at the bottom of a receipt, the show reconstructs the space of a shop and conflates it with the spaces of the museum and the artist's personal studio. With early works alongside newly produced objects, Total traces the artist's long-standing interest in images and their effect on reality, how they impact the ways in which relationships form, and how they're embedded in the construction of identity, or the “fictioning of self.”

Link
Exhibitions at Sprüth Magers
Martine Syms

Martine Syms
Loser Back Home
June 2–August 26, 2023
Los Angeles

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to announce the representation of Martine Syms and present the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition Loser Back Home will premiere her latest works in video, sculpture, painting and photography. Garnering widespread attention for her work that combines conceptual grit, humor and social commentary, Syms has emerged in recent years as one of the defining artists of her generation. Sprüth Magers is pleased to be representing Syms in collaboration with Sadie Coles HQ and Bridget Donahue.

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Press

The Many Lives of Martine Syms
The New York Times, article by Travis Diehl, September 2, 2022

Martine Syms’s Portrait of Art School Alienation
The Nation, review by Jordan Coley, November 7, 2022

Slippage and Misdirection: Dara Birnbaum in Conversation With Martine Syms
Frieze, interview edited by Lauren Cornell, October 18, 2022

The First Feature Film From Martine Syms Is a Hazy, Alluring Send-Up of the Art World
Vogue, review by Róisín Tapping, February 2, 2022

Martine Syms’s “Shame Space”
The Brooklyn Rail, review by Megan N. Liberty, February 2021

The Intoxicating Collages of Martine Syms
AnOther Magazine, article by Sophie Bew, April 14, 2020

Martine Syms discusses her Projects exhibition at MoMA
Artforum, article by Martine Syms and Alex Fialho, May 22, 2017

At Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” biennial, Martine Syms makes her moment
The Los Angeles Times, article by Deborah Vankin, June 11, 2016

Martine Syms at the ICA: “people act like art is a white thing”
The Guardian, Interview by Eliza Anyangwe, May 9, 2016

Biography

Martine Syms (*1988, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. Selected solo exhibitions include Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2024), Carré d’Art–Musée d’art contemporain, Nimes (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2022), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2022), Fridericianum, Kassel (2021), Secession, Vienna (2019) and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017). Group exhibitions include Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2021), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a.M. (2020), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019) and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018). Syms’ work has been recognized through multiple awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), Herb Alpert Award (2022), Creative Capital Award (2021), United States Artists Fellowship (2020) and Future Fields Art Prize (2020).

Education
2017 MFA, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
2007 BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Awards, Grants and Fellowships
2023 Guggenheim Fellowship
2022 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
2021 Creative Capital Award
2020 Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media, awarded by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
ToftH Artist Fellow, Berggruen Institute
United States Artists Fellowship
2018 Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago
Film Screenings (selected)
2023 The African Desperate, e-flux Screening Room, Brooklyn, March 21
The African Desperate, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, March 16
2021 Incense Sweaters & Ice, Le Cinéma Club, online, February–March
2019 Sunset Kino, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, July 24–August 21
Incense Sweaters & Ice, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, February 28
2018 Incense Sweaters & Ice, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, July 13
In the (Commercial) Break: Screening and Conversation with Martine Syms, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Kadist, Paris, France, June 21
X-Tra Presents Artist Writes #3: Incense, Sweaters & Ice, 356 Mission Road, Los Angeles, April 29
Martine Syms: Incense, Sweaters & Ice, Tramway, Glasgow Film Festival, February 23
2017 Artists’ Film Club: Martine Syms, Incense Sweaters & Ice, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, November 2–5
Modern Mondays: An Evening with Martine Syms, Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 10
2016 A Pilot for a Show About Nowhere screening in Wild Sounds, Flaherty NYC series, Anthology Film Archives, New York, October 3
My Only Idol Is Reality screening in Truth or Dare? Experimental Cinema and the Documentary Turn, 1984–2016, Indigo Festival, City Museum of Ljublijana, Slovenia, September 8
Martine Syms and Khalil Joseph, Memory Palace, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, online (https://www.moca.org/openwindow), ongoing
From Mouth to Hand, Magic Lantern Cinema, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, May 19
Martine Syms: A Pilot for a Show About Nowhere, Vdrome #94, online, April 17–30
Memory Palace, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, February 22
2015 Artists’ Film Club: Avant-Noir, Volume 2, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, July 8
Enter/Exit, group screening and lecture by Steven Cairns, Kunsthalle Bern, November 29
Martine Syms: The Unreliable Narrator, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, November 12
2014 Small New Films, REDCAT, Los Angeles, April 21
Public Collections
Art Institute of Chicago
Baltimore Museum of Art
Carré d'Art, Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes, France
Guggenheim Museums and Foundation
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, Chicago
KADIST, Paris and San Francisco
Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, England
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
Perez Art Museum, Miami
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX
Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Tate, London
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York