The Museum of Modern Art premiers Shana Moulton’s ‘Meta/Physical Therapy’

The Museum of Modern Art premiers Shana Moulton's 'Meta/Physical Therapy'

Healing meets the surreal in artist Shana Moulton's hyper-saturated dreamscape in the exhibition and performance series "Meta/Physical Therapy,"which premiered at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (Feb. 17-April 21).

The exhibition features a new site-specific installation by Moulton, an art professor at UC Santa Barbara, 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.

"When I was first composing Cynthia's domestic space I wanted it to feel like 'a room of one's own,' or like a cross between a home office and an exercise room," said Moulton. "I imagined it from one angle and I also wanted it to feel flat and claustrophobic, so the center form in the main projection is bell-jar shaped." The entire shape replicated a giant vanity mirror.

Transforming the spaceinto a prismatic environment, the 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 Pinesseries, 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 is accompanied by a series of performances created in collaboration with composer Nick Hallett, bringing Cynthia's inner world to life.

"Shana Moulton's iconic performance persona, Cynthia, embodies the complexities of contemporary life. Emblematic of the deep-seated effects of mass consumption, Cynthia is bombarded with choices, confused by technology and motivated by advertising," said Erica Papernik-Shimizu, MoMA associate curator of media and performance, who organized the exhibition. "She exists in a state of perpetual searching - for physical wellness, knowledge, purpose. Allegedly simple tasks seem onerous and overwhelming, until her limitations kaleidoscopically open up into new realms of possibility."

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