28 Sep Yannis window

Source Credit:  Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by .  Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/83379-yannis-window

Commonwealth and Council and Labor present Yannis window, a single-channel video
installation by American Artist. Inspired by the science fiction author Octavia E. Butler’s 1993
novel Parable of the Sower and touching on the parallels between the author’s and the artist’s
lives as Pasadena/Altadena natives, Yannis window explores various contemporary
phenomena presaged by Butler: the turn towards authoritarian demagoguery and the
privatization of public goods and services in the wake of ecological disaster and social collapse;
the technologist impulse for space exploration and colonization; and the resurgence of racism,
sexism, and xenophobia in times of political unrest.

An iterative, accretive work, Yannis window is comprised of discrete video episodes. Three
completed episodes so far include: The arroyo seco (2022) a 1990s-style public access
documentary about the area near Pasadena where Jet Propulsion Laboratories was founded
and where both Butler and American Artist grew up; Christopher Donner (2024) a presidential
campaign commercial with a candidate composite character of Donald Trump, Kanye West, and
Christopher Donner; and Alicia Catalina Godinez Leal (2024) a news report on the death of an
astronaut character from Parable of the sower. The episodes are played on a translucent
screen with a window frame in the American Craftsman style commonly found in Pasadena.
Mentioned in the novel, the window television belongs to a once-wealthy family’s home in the
fortified neighborhood in which the protagonist Lauren Olamina lives in 2024, when Parable of
the sower begins.

Yannis window originally debuted at REDCAT in 2022 and was most recently exhibited at the
Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2024 at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, with a newly
commissioned episode.

Writer and Director, American Artist; Producer, Chester Toye; Director of Photography, Corey
Gegner; First Assistant Camera, Celeste Barbosa; Key Grip, Danny Green; Gaffer, Kristin
Steusloff; Editor, Bryan Monroe Simpson; Visual Effects, Jonathan Manni; Sound Mixer,
Tomasso Pompei; Post-Production Sound Mixer, Andrew Siedenburg; Production Designer,
Jesse Hoffman; Props Assistant, Haley Castro; Production Assistants, Ethan Duffy, Gabriela
Freid, Marion Tannis; Production Manager, Rafaela Sanchez; Christopher Donner, Ajuma
Rahmaan; Megan Reed, Anna Dennis; Alicia Leal, Alondra Sanchez; Guadalupe Leal, Carolina
Rivera Escamilla; Uncle, Rafael Escamilla; Neighbor, Ayana Jamieson; Neighbor’s Child, Mars
Jamieson; Astronauts, Taylor Aldridge, Kibum Kim, Joel Ferree.

American Artist (b. 1989, Altadena; lives and works in New York) received an MFA from The
New School (2015), and a BFA from California Polytechnic University, Pomona (2011). Solo
exhibitions have been held at REDCAT, Los Angeles (2022); Labor, Mexico City (2021);
Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
(2020); Queens Museum (2019); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2019);
Koenig and Clinton, Brooklyn (2019); and Housing, New York (2018). Selected group
exhibitions have been held at Centre d’art Contemporain Genève (2024); Guggenheim Museum
(2023); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023); Whitney Museum of American Art (2023); The
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2023); Kunsthalle Basel (2021); San Jose Museum of Art
(2020); Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin (2020); MoMA PS1, Queens (2020); LC Queisser,
Tbilisi (2019); The Studio Museum in Harlem (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit
(2019); Performance Space New York (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018);
47 Canal, New York (2018); and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2017). American
Artist is a recipient of Trellis Art Fund grant (2024); Creative Capital Award (2022), LACMA Art +
Technology Lab grant (2021), and Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship (2019).
American Artist has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn (2021); Whitney
Museum Youth Insights Program, New York (2021); Red Bull Arts, Detroit (2020); ASSEMBLY,
Brooklyn (2019); Abrons Art Center, New York (2019); PioneerWorks, Brooklyn (2018); and
Denniston Hill, Glen Wild (2018).

American Artist’s work is in the collections of Kadist Art Foundation; Marieluise Hessel
Collection, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson; Museum of Modern Art, New York; University of
Iowa Stanley Museum of Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Source Credit:  Content and images from Wall Street International Magazine by .  Read the original article - https://www.meer.com/en/83379-yannis-window