New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art has announced the expansion of its biennial in 2024, including five additional curators in sound art, film and performance. Invited by head curators Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, the new recruits (Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Taja Cheek, Greg de Cuir Jr. and Zackary Drucker) will develop an online programme and special events at the museum, showcasing innovative works outside of the Whitney Biennial’s traditional gallery presentation.
In a press release, the museum delineated responsibilities between the five new curators: “Artists and curators Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Greg de Cuir Jr. and Zackary Drucker will select filmmakers who highlight a breadth of expression through moving images today. American experimentalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and curator Taja Cheek will select a group of artists and develop a performance and sound series in the museum’s galleries and theatre space that represents the forefront of contemporary experimental performance and sound.”
Iles and Onli additionally detailed their commitment to questioning “the porousness of boundaries and identities, along with a thoughtful curation of live performance that offers a sensorial experience centred around embodiment”, themes they believe all new curators explore in interwoven film and performance programmes.
Arunanondchai is a Bangkok- and New York-based multimedia artist who focuses on the power of storytelling, secular and non-secular collectivity and polyphonic narrative techniques. He is a co-founder of Ghost:2561, a video and performance-art triennial in Bangkok.
The Canadian Inuk artist asinnajaq is a photographer, writer, curator and filmmaker based in Montreal. She was part of the curatorial team that represented Canada at the 58th Venice Biennale, and co-created Montreal’s Tillitarniit art festival, which celebrates Inuit arts and culture.
De Cuir is a co-founder and artistic director of Kinopravda Institute in Belgrade, Serbia, and a film-programme organiser at many institutions worldwide, including London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, New York’s Anthology Film Archives, Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum and Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival.
Drucker is a multimedia artist, director and producer, who has dedicated her career to interrogating cultural understandings of difference. Through work directing and producing shows and films like The Making of an It Girl, The Stroll, The Lady and the Dale, This Is Me and Transparent, she has worked collaboratively to present narratives focused on gender-expansive people and women, centering their experiences and struggles.
Cheek, known professionally as L’Rain, is a curator and musician, who will develop a performance and sound series in the galleries hosting the Whitney Biennial. Cheek previously led performance programmes at New York’s MoMA PS1, advised artists on realising projects with institutions in New York and founded a DIY rehearsal and performance space in Brooklyn. She has received international acclaim as a musician, most recently for her 2023 LP, I Killed Your Dog.
The 81st Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing, opens on 20 March 2024.