The Surrealists understood that a lot depends upon context: What’s extraordinary lining a glove, as an example, turns into grotesque in a teacup. Angolan artist Sandra Poulson — who studied vogue in Lisbon and London, and lives between the latter, Angola’s capital, Luanda, and Amsterdam — operates below an analogous ethos of off-kilter recontextualization. In her first museum exhibition, at MoMA PS1, she presents wood assemblages embedded in or punctured by the floating signifiers linked with Angola after its Civil Conflict (1975–2002), which started instantly after the nation gained independence from Portugal. A mattress body lurches drunkenly towards the viewer; a mirror sits sullenly within the nook, a headboard bolts upright like a soldier. Throughout these largely family objects, Poulson emphasizes that historical past is one thing that haunts you as you sleep, as you costume, as you have a look at your self within the mirror.
A number of advanced circuits converge in Poulson’s work: the worldwide commerce routes that introduced this particular wooden into the artist’s path; symbols linked to necessary occasions in Angolan historical past as they intersect with world occasions; and, lastly, Poulson’s personal stylistic iconography. The fabric itself is freighted: Classic Dutch objects made out of wooden that may be sourced from Angola sit alongside chipboard furnishings made in China in an American type. It’s the bodily manifestation of a worldwide commerce community made native, the objects carrying proof of their circulation — peeling stock stickers or light stamps — and their use, such because the ring imprint of a cup.
Sandra Poulson, “Cabinda Dreams” (2024), discovered veneered plywood bedframe, chipboard, and MDF
Poulson’s technique, then, isn’t a lot about lodging one signifier (logos, presidents’ silhouettes, and symbols of native organizations) into one other (wooden) a lot as colliding them collectively. Her interventions actually draw consideration to the unseen forces which have formed these objects — the image for the European Union, a dominant commerce companion, seems a number of instances. However by setting them in wooden, moderately than extra ephemeral media reminiscent of digital imagery and even attire, she attracts consideration to their significance and heft: These symbols and what they characterize don’t merely layer over your pores and skin; they puncture the way in which you reside.
Among the furniture-as-artworks on view, such because the discovered mirror “Untitled (Mirror)” or the wood speaker “Leitura dos Acordos de Alvor, January 1975” (Studying of the Alvor Accords), which performs aloud the Angolan independence settlement, really feel each underdone and too on-the-nose. Whereas I preferred that the previous made a trick mirror of the exhibition area, intensifying its surreality by reflecting and recombining the opposite absurdist objects on its floor in jarring and sudden methods, positioning a discovered object within the nook as the only intervention felt a bit low cost in comparison with different works, and fell proportionately flat to me. In the meantime, the latter emits audio so softly that I believe even Portuguese audio system would miss its significance; even when seen, the work’s meant impact of drawing consideration to the way in which historical past permeates lived expertise is already achieved extra compellingly by different items within the present.
Sandra Poulson, “Propaganda Flush” (2024), Oregon pine, oak reclaimed from a Seventeenth-century French church, meranti,plywood, and metal
The extra profitable objects on view are concurrently unfinished and extremely completed, heightening their absurdity. In “Cabinda Dreams” (all works 2024), a bedframe with the EU brand punched into a budget wood headboard has been sawed at a clear diagonal on one finish in order that it angles haphazardly, as if pleading for assist or reaching to seize you. Different objects short-circuited my sense of fabric logic: The wood headboard of “Candidato a Presidente da República de Angola” (Candidate for President of the Republic of Angola) sits upright on a sheet of rusted metal, uncannily unsupported. I couldn’t decide both the standard or weight of the wooden. Elsewhere — significantly in “Confessionário” (Confessional) — there are apertures the place there shouldn’t be, glass the place you wouldn’t count on it. And stroll round to the again of “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus” (Common Church of the Kingdom of God) and also you’ll see that it’s been blown out, a budget corkboard drawers sagging from the shortage of assist, talking to the disasters that cover beneath the veneer of stability. In the meantime, “Propaganda Flush” declares after which instantly curtails its operate: The bathroom is suspended within the air, torn from the sewage pipes that make it what it’s.
The title of the exhibition, Este quarto parece uma República! (This Bed room Seems Like a Republic!) comes from an Angolan saying that compares the messiness of nation-building to that of a room. Certainly, Poulson’s room, manufactured from wooden, that without delay humble and enduring materials, makes historical past palpable. World commerce, colonial legacies, and the signifiers she presents will not be distant and immaterial; they’re the structure of every day life.
Two views of Sandra Poulson, “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus” (2024), Oregon pine, discovered veneered plywood nightstand, and chipboard
Two views of Sandra Poulson, “Untitled (Mirror)” (2024), discovered mirror with veneered chipboard and plywood
Sandra Poulson, “Candidato a Presidente da República de Angola” (2024), Oregon pine, discovered wood bedframe, veneered plywood, chipboard, MDF, and metal
Set up view of Sandra Poulson: Este quarto parece uma República!
Sandra Poulson: Este quarto parece uma República! continues at MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Lengthy Island Metropolis, Queens) by means of October 6. The exhibition was curated by Elena Ketelsen González.
