Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Lebanese/British, born in Amman 1985) lives and works in Beirut. His work is distinguished by the ways in which he experiments with voice and sound to create complex political narratives. In these he employs surveillance technologies and archival materials to explore the juridical implications of listening and the role of sound as a tool to silence, suppress, and resist. Combining science, journalism, a commitment to social justice, and art, Abu Hamdan’s aural investigations have served as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International. His research has also contributed to the work of the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture.

For the Future Fields Commission, Abu Hamdan has proposed an installation, tentatively titled How to Hear Impossible Speech: Lessons from the Division of Perceptual Studies, which aims to expand our understanding of testimony and witness through narratives of reincarnation—a belief in the transmigration of the soul from one life to the next. Though distinct from the artist’s more widely known acoustic investigations, this commission will maintain a focus on ideas of resonance as Abu Hamdan charts the transmigration of speech, not through walls, but across time, bodies, and complex histories of unrest, subjugation, and colonization.

Abu Hamdan is developing the commission in close consultation with Amanda Sroka, the Museum’s Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, as well as Irene Calderoni, Curator at the Fondazione. The work will premiere at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in spring 2022 and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin during the following winter. It will be jointly acquired by the two institutions.

Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and CEO, Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “Lawrence Abu Hamdan has emerged as a powerful voice in contemporary art, and in this regard, he is the perfect choice for our Future Fields Commission. We look forward to the realization of his provocative project proposal, and are delighted both to partner once again with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and to share the outcome of our collaborations with visitors.”

Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, said, “Future Fields is an extraordinary tool to explore contemporary art exactly where it is most vital, in the works of a new generation of artists, across the globe, developing new forms of visual production. We are delighted that Lawrence Abu Hamdan has accepted to be part of the already notable roster of artists that have received the commission.”

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, said: “We strongly believe that institutions today have a responsibility to support and foster art practices that are imaginative, daring, and committed, and Future Fields offers us a significant international platform to fulfil this aim. Lawrence Abu Hamdan is one of the most significant and innovative figures of his generation and we look forward to working with him on this ambitious project."

The commission followed a nomination process in which an invited group of leading curators, writers, and critics from around the world were asked to submit artists’ names for consideration by the curatorial teams at the Museum and the Fondazione. The selection of Lawrence Abu Hamdan resulted from submissions provided by Ruth Estevez, Senior Curator-at-Large of Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts and Curator 34th Sao Paolo Biennale; Myriam Ben Salah, curator, writer and Editor-at-Large of Kaleidoscope Magazine; Polly Staple, Director of Collection, British Art, Tate, London; and Zasha Colah, an Indian curator and lecturer at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) Milan as well as co-founder of black rice in Tuensang and Clark House Initiative in Mumbai.

Commenting on his selection for the commission, the artist said: “I am really looking forward to working on this commission with such supportive institutions, such impressive exhibition spaces, and such smart and precise curators, Amanda Sroka and Irene Calderoni. I am grateful to all those who have worked to make this possible and who continue to support the production of time-based media. I hope I can live up to the great work of previous recipients, Martine Syms and Rachel Rose.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo together established The Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media in 2016, awarding each recipient $125,000 for the production of the newly commissioned work. Its first recipient was Rachel Rose, whose inaugural project, Rachel Rose: Wil-o-Wisp, was presented at the two institutions in 2018–19, accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. Martine Syms was the second recipient, and her exhibition will open at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo next spring before traveling to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in fall 2020.

About Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Abu Hamdan has gained significant international recognition in recent years and was recently one of four winners awarded the 2019 Turner Prize. He is also the recipient of the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award. In 2017 he won the short film award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and in 2016 he received the Nam June Paik Award for new media. Prominent solo presentations include the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2019); Witte De With, Rotterdam (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Portikus Frankfurt (2016); and Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2015). His work was also featured in the 58th Venice Biennale and Sharjah Biennial (both 2019) and has entered the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Tate Modern, London.

About the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is Philadelphia’s art museum. A place that welcomes everyone. A world-renowned collection. A landmark building. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

Social Media @philamuseum

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art by phone at 215-684-7860, by fax at 215-235-0050, or by e-mail at pressroom@philamuseum.org. The Museum is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call 215-763-8100.

About the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a foundation for contemporary art, set up in Turin in 1995 by contemporary art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Active since 1992 at a personal level in the promotion of young artists, she saw in the creation of an arts foundation the opportunity to transform her passion into an organized activity able to collaborate more effectively with Italian and international institutions. Since then, the Fondazione has gone on to produce an annual exhibition program that supports contemporary artists. It has also gone on to commission or co-produce highly influential works of contemporary art, for presentation at the Fondazione’s main space in Turin, or for biennales and festivals abroad. Recent commissions include works and exhibitions by Berlinde De Bruyckere, Andra Ursuta, Ian Cheng, Ed Atkins and Adrian Villar Rojas. The Fondazione’s main aim is to encourage a greater understanding of contemporary art and of today’s leading trends internationally. The vast field of visual arts – painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance – is analyzed and presented to the public not only through the exhibition program but also through an array of in-depth educational activities and events, such as conferences, talks led by artists, curators and critics from acclaimed Italian and international institutions.

Social Media @fondsrr

Martine Syms (American, born 1988) is a Los Angeles-based artist who has developed an interdisciplinary approach that bridges the different domains of film, performance, installation, and publishing. Investigative in practice, her works employ multiple technologies to explore representations of the black female body and reveal the ways in which identity, history, and power are constructed, performed, packaged, and consumed. This new commission will provide support during a pivotal moment in Syms’s career, allowing her to extend her multi-faceted approach towards new and increasingly experimental techniques while deepening her investigations into the representations of blackness across generations, geographies, mediums, and traditions.

For the commission, Syms has proposed to create an interactive video installation using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that will build upon the artist’s interest in the proliferation, circulation, and consumption of images, as well as her continued research into machine systems and technologies that deprive, and at times erase, black bodies, voices, and narratives of visibility and agency.

Syms is developing the work in close consultation with Irene Calderoni, Curator at the Fondazione, and Amanda Sroka, the Museum’s Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art. The new work will premiere at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin in Spring 2020, followed by a presentation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Fall 2020.

Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and CEO, Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “Martine Syms has certainly emerged as a powerful voice in contemporary art, and she has achieved significant momentum. We believe that this is an important moment in which to offer our support. This commission reflects our deepening commitment to new media and will be a significant addition to the collection.”

Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. And Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, said, “The Commission offers the Museum and the Fondazione a tool to connect deeply with what is more vital in art today. I feel that Martine represents precisely that, a willingness to venture into new technologies with a complex understanding of the politics of representation that are so much at the center of our contemporary struggles.”

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, said: “We feel strongly that this artist has reached an important turning point in her work and we are eager to follow the project’s development as she pursues this major opportunity. We look forward to sharing it with audiences both in Europe and the United States.”

The Future Fields Commission is granted every two years to an artist determined by a nomination process in which an invited group of leading curators, writers, and critics from around the world are asked to submit artists’ names for consideration by the curatorial teams at the Museum and the Fondazione. The selection of Martine Syms resulted from submissions provided by an international group of curators and scholars that included: Victoria Brooks (curator of time-based visual art at EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and chair of the Contemporary Curatorial Workshop at the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art), Zasha Colah (curator based in Turin and Mumbai and co-founder of Clark House Initiative), Inti Guerrero (the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate in London and Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects in Manila/Bataan), Polly Staple (Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London), and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie (writer and critic based in Beirut and New York).

Commenting on her selection for the Commission, the artist said: “I’m thrilled to have been granted The Future Fields Commission and am looking forward to developing this project with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. I’m excited to explore the ways in which AI can be introduced into and push these boundaries, particularly at a time when the limits of AI itself are still very much under investigation.”

The first recipient of The Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media was Rachel Rose, whose inaugural project has culminated in Rachel Rose: Wil-o-Wisp, currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through September 16, 2018. In this mesmerizing new video installation, a woman’s fate becomes inextricably tied to a culture of upheaval, suspicion, and persecution in seventeenth-century agrarian England. On November 2, 2018 the work will have its European premiere in Turin, where it will remain on view through February 3, 2019.

About Martine Syms

Martine Syms obtained an MFA degree from Bard College in 2017 and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Her work has been exhibited widely, including focused exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Camden Arts Centre, London; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and group exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the New Museum, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Syms is also the former co-director of Chicago’s Golden Age, a project space focused on printed matter, as well as the founder of the independent publishing company, Dominica. The artist lives in Los Angeles and is a faculty member in the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.

About the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is Philadelphia’s art museum. A place that welcomes everyone. A world-renowned collection. A landmark building. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

About the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a foundation for contemporary art, set up in Turin in 1995 by contemporary art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Active since 1992 at a personal level in the promotion of young artists, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo saw in the creation of an arts foundation the opportunity to transform her passion into an organized activity able to collaborate more effectively with Italian and international institutions. Since then, the Fondazione has gone on to produce an annual exhibition program that supports contemporary artists. It has also gone on to commission or co-produce highly influential works of contemporary art, for presentation at the Fondazione’s main space in Turin, or for biennales and festivals abroad. Recent commissions include works and exhibitions by Adrian Villar Rojas, Ian Cheng, Ed Atkins and Steve McQueen. The Fondazione’s main aim is to encourage a greater understanding of contemporary art and of today’s leading trends internationally. The vast field of visual arts – painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance – is analyzed and presented to the public not only through the exhibition program but also through an array of in-depth educational activities and events, such as conferences, talks led by artists, curators and critics from acclaimed Italian and international institutions.

Social Media @philamuseum

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art phone at 215-684-7860, by fax at 215-235-0050, or by e-mail at pressroom@philamuseum.org. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present a new video installation by Rachel Rose, the inaugural recipient of the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media, which has been jointly awarded to the artist by the Museum and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. A project under development for nearly two years, this commission represents the most ambitiously scaled production in the artist’s career to date, leading to the creation of a work that will enter the collections of these two institutions. Titled Wil-o-Wisp, Rose’s work will be on view from May 2 through September 16, 2018, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It will then travel to the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy, where it will open in November.

Timothy Rub, the Museum’s George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, stated: “Seeing this project evolve since the awarding of the commission has been deeply gratifying. It demonstrates just how vital it is for institutions like ours to support emerging talent at precisely the time when such support is needed. This collaboration with our partners in Turin has also provided a wonderful opportunity to expand and strengthen our engagement with contemporary art.”

Rachel Rose, (born 1986), has emerged as an important voice in contemporary video, widely recognized for her deft digital editing that aligns disparate visual images and historical references. This new commission has provided her with an opportunity to widen the scope of her interests by investigating narrative devices and story-telling. In Wil-o-Wisp, the artist has created a live action video in which a woman’s fate becomes inextricably tied to moments of upheaval, suspicion, and persecution in 17^th century agrarian England, a time during which the Enclosure Movement led to the privatization of land throughout the agrarian community. The video follows Elspeth’s life over a period of thirty years, including familial moments and tragedy, her practice of magic and her fate of persecution.

The work reflects upon the harsh realities of English rural life during a time of a rising culture of suspicion in which women, such as Elspeth, engaging in nontraditional healing practices were often seen as threatening to an increasingly regulated society. The title of the work, Wil-o-Wisp, refers to ghostly lights that could be seen hovering at night over bogs and marshes and that, in folklore, could have the sinister effect of leading people astray. In Rose’s work, the title speaks to the characters whose paths are determined both by magic and the power of coincidence.

Rose shot the work at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that offered a period setting of houses in an English vernacular style and an austere winter landscape. Rose’s video is characterized as much by her intensive approach to post-production as by the attention she gives to the script and on-set staging. After filming the work in Plimoth, she wove various visual and sound effects into the footage, such as musical scores, sung and spoken narratives, smoke, and footage of ghostly sprites that amplify the story of Elspeth’s life. Treating the narrative itself as a collage that comes together in multiple chapters, points of view, and emotive states, Rose’s addition of these elements creates a world in which the circumstance of history meets the coincidence and magic of fate.

Wil-o-Wisp will form a holistic video installation in a large gallery, projecting the video onto an eighteen-foot wide screen at the center. Working to create an dialogue between what is seen in the moving images and what is physically experienced in the gallery, Rose has developed a space that acts as a room within a room, playing with proportion and perception. The interior perimeter is lined with two layers of scrim, creating a moiré effect—a shimmer-like rippling across its surface—which also appears within certain scenes of the video. Using this disorientating perspective, Rose bridges a worldview of 17th century England informed by the belief in magic with the visitor’s present experience in the gallery.

Erica Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, said: “While Rachel Rose’s carefully woven narrative is set in the past, it speaks to larger themes and concerns that are relevant to our world today. Wil-o-Wisp reflects the inescapable feeling that history is cyclical.”

About Rachel Rose

Rachel Rose (American, born 1986) creates video installations that combine video, sound, and architectural elements. She has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2017), the Aspen Art Museum (2016), the Museu Serralves in Porto, Lisbon (2016), the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London (2015), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2015). She was the recipient of the Frieze Artist Award (2015), and her work is collected by prominent institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Ishikawa Foundation; Tate, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Publication

Rose’s work for the Future Fields Commission will be the subject of a forthcoming book that will contain an interview with the artist conducted by Erica Battle, and will document both the development of the project and its installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It will also feature a commissioned essay by film scholar Erika Balsom, who will explore Wil-o-Wisp in the context of Rose’s own work and other artists working with time-based media today. It will be published in Fall 2018 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in collaboration with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and in association with Yale University Press.

Support

This exhibition has been made possible by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Contemporary Art, Lyn M. Ross, Emily and Mike Cavanagh, Susan and James Meyer, and Mitchell L. and Hilarie L. Morgan.

Credits as of April 17, 2018

About the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media

In 2016, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo established the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media as a collaborative initiative to jointly commission and acquire new work by artists from around the world who are active in video, film, performance, and sound. The Commission supports the creation and production of a new work every two years that will be presented at both the Museum and the Fondazione. With its unique focus and its commitment to the joint acquisition of the works produced with the support of this initiative, the commission aims to give unprecedented opportunities to international artists who are exploring new territory in these experimental modes of contemporary art. Rachel Rose is the inaugural recipient.

About the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is Philadelphia’s art museum. A place that welcomes everyone. A world-renowned collection. A landmark building. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

About the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a foundation for contemporary art, set up in Turin in 1995 by contemporary art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Active since 1992 at a personal level in the promotion of young artists, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo saw in the creation of an arts foundation the opportunity to transform her passion into an organized activity able to collaborate more effectively with Italian and international institutions. Since then, the Fondazione has gone on to produce an annual exhibition program that supports contemporary artists. It has also gone on to commission or co-produce highly influential works of contemporary art, for presentation at the Fondazione’s main space in Turin, or for biennales and festivals abroad. Recent commissions include works and exhibitions by Adrian Villar Rojas, Ian Cheng, Ed Atkins and Steve McQueen. The Fondazione’s main aim is to encourage a greater understanding of contemporary art and of today’s leading trends internationally. The vast field of visual arts – painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance – is analyzed and presented to the public not only through the exhibition program but also through an array of in-depth educational activities and events, such as conferences, talks led by artists, curators and critics from acclaimed Italian and international institutions.

Social Media @philamuseum

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art by phone at 215-684-7860, by fax at 215-235-0050, or by e-mail at pressroom@philamuseum.org. The Museum is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call 215-763-8100.