Museum of Modern Art hosts a new site-specific installation by Shana Moulton, whose work captures the banality and enormity of everyday life.
Through performance, video, and sculpture, Moulton chronicles the experiences of her semi-autobiographical alter-ego, Cynthia, as she navigates personal choices and physical limitations. Transforming the Kravis Studio into a prismatic environment, this installation employs the artist’s signature blend of spiritual imagery, medical technology, popular culture, and references to high art and dollar-store kitsch. An extension of Moulton’s Whispering Pines series, which began in 2002, the project continues the artist’s incisive examination of the aesthetics of pain and healing and the mass marketing of wellness and explores the maladies of middle age.
Presented as a multi-chapter narrative, the installation will accompany a series of performances created in collaboration with composer Nick Hallett, bringing Cynthia’s inner world to life.
Through her performances, videos, and multidimensional installations, Shana Moulton (American, b. 1976) creates worlds at the threshold of absurdity and truth, catharsis and cliché, the material and the spiritual. The artist positions herself as an individual moving with worry and wonder through environments designed from autobiographical experiences, subconscious associations, and fantasy. Ascribing healing properties to the banal trappings of everyday life, Moulton’s works elicit a potent empathy on the viewer, allowing these narratives to continue beyond the immediate experience of an artwork. For this evening, a presentation of recent works will be followed by a Q&A with the artist, with a special appearance by her collaborator Nick Hallett.
