SFMOMA Announces SOFT POWER — International Contemporary Exhibition Featuring New Commissions And Recent Work By 20 Artists

Opening in October 2019 — the First Major Exhibition for SFMOMA Organized by Curator of Contemporary Art Eungie Joo

From the press release:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (April 10, 2019) — Timely and provocative, SOFT POWER is an exhibition about the ways in which artists deploy art to explore their roles as citizens and social actors. Appropriated from the Reagan-era term used to describe how a country’s “soft” assets such as culture, political values and foreign policies can be more influential than violence or coercion, the title SOFT POWER suggests a contemplation on the potential of art and offers a provocation to the public to exert their own influence on the world. The exhibition opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on October 26, 2019 and remains on view through February 17, 2020.

Organized by Eungie Joo, curator of contemporary art, and presented exclusively at SFMOMA on two floors of the museum, the exhibition features new and recent work by 20 international artists working in 12 countries. More than three quarters of the works in SOFT POWER are commissions and new works never before presented in the United States. Taken together, the works demonstrate what cultural theorist, filmmaker and catalogue contributor Manthia Diawara has called a solidarity between intuitions — a concept that acknowledges the complexity, darkness and opacity from which our reality emerges — the poetry and imagination of our differences. According to Joo, “Professor Diawara’s solidarity between intuitions expresses how specific works can enhance our understanding of others by association and relation, while maintaining their distinct contexts and content. I trust the public can relate to many of the concerns of the artists in SOFT POWER, and hope that his exhibition will unleash an untapped energy among us.”

I will be making a video in relation to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology's collection and a live performance. I am honoured to be included in this exhibition. 

Magdalyn Asimakis is writing about my work for the accompanying publication.

For more information:
https://www.sfmoma.org/press-release/sfmoma-announces-soft-power-international-contemporary-exhibition-featuring-new-commissions-and-recent-work-by-20-artists/