2018 Triennial

Songs for Sabotage brings together works across mediums by twenty-six artists, artist groups, and collectives from nineteen countries, the majority of whom are exhibiting in the United States for the first time. The exhibition questions how individuals and collectives around the world might effectively address the connection of images and culture to the forces that structure our society. Together, the artists in Songs for Sabotage propose a kind of propaganda, engaging with new and traditional media in order to reveal the built systems that construct our reality, images, and truths. The exhibition amounts to a call for action, an active engagement, and an interference in political and social structures urgently requiring them.

Songs for Sabotage explores interventions into cities, infrastructures, and the networks of everyday life, proposing objects that might create common experience. The exhibition takes as a given that these structures are linked to the entrenched powers of colonialism and institutionalized racism that magnify inequity. Through their distinct approaches, the artists in Songs for Sabotage offer models for dismantling and replacing the political and economic networks that envelop today’s global youth. Invoking the heightened role of identity in today’s culture, they take on the technological, economic, and material structures that stand in the way of collectivity.

These artists are further connected by both their deep engagements with the specificity of local context and a critical examination—and embrace—of the internationalism that links them. Their works range widely in medium and form, including painted allegories for the administration of power, sculptural proposals to renew (and destroy) monuments, and cinematic works that engage the modes of propaganda that influence us more and more each day. Viewed in ensemble, these works provide models for reflecting upon and working against a system that seems doomed to failure.

Songs for Sabotage is curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator at the New Museum, and Alex Gartenfeld, founding Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, with Francesca Altamura, Curatorial Assistant at the New Museum. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue copublished by the New Museum and Phaidon Press Limited.

Artist list

Cian Dayrit (b. 1989, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Rizal, Philippines)
Violet Dennison (b. 1989, Bridgeport, CT; lives and works in New York, NY)
Tomm El-Saieh (b. 1984, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; lives and works in Miami, FL)
Janiva Ellis (b. 1987, Oakland, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)
Claudia Martínez Garay (b. 1983, Ayacucho, Peru; lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Haroon Gunn-Salie (b. 1989, Cape Town, South Africa; lives and works between Johannesburg, South Africa, and Belo Horizonte, Brazil)
Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989, Detroit, MI; lives and works in Detroit, MI)
Tiril Hasselknippe (b. 1984, Arendal, Norway; lives and works in Oslo, Norway)
Inhabitants (founded in 2015, New York, NY, by Pedro Neves Marques and Mariana Silva) with Margarida Mendes
KERNEL (founded in 2009, Athens, Greece, by Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, and Theodoros Giannakis)
Manolis D. Lemos (b. 1989, Athens, Greece; lives and works in Athens, Greece)
Zhenya Machneva (b. 1988, Leningrad, Russia; lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia)
Chemu Ng’ok (b. 1989, Nairobi, Kenya; lives and works in Grahamstown, South Africa)
Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude (b. 1988, Harare, Zimbabwe; lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe)
Daniela Ortiz (b. 1985, Cusco, Peru; lives and works in Barcelona, Spain)
Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992, Saïda, Algeria; lives and works between Oran, Algeria, and London, UK)
Hardeep Pandhal (b. 1985, Birmingham, UK; lives and works in Glasgow, UK)
Dalton Paula (b. 1982, Brasília, Brazil; lives and works in Goiânia, Brazil)
Julia Phillips (b. 1985, Hamburg, Germany; lives and works in New York, NY)
Wong Ping (b. 1984, Hong Kong; lives and works in Hong Kong)
Anupam Roy (b. 1985, West Bengal, India; lives and works in New Delhi, India)
Manuel Solano (b. 1987, Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico)
Diamond Stingily (b. 1990, Chicago, IL; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Song Ta (b. 1988, Leizhou, China; lives and works in Guangzhou, China)
Wilmer Wilson IV (b. 1989, Richmond, VA; lives and works in Philadelphia, PA)
Shen Xin (b. 1990, Chengdu, China; lives and works between London, UK, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

Public Programs
2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage Artist Panel Discussion
Thursday, February 15, 7pm
Join us during the opening week of the New Museum’s 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage for a special artist panel with Triennial artists Cian Dayrit, Haroon Gunn-Salie, and Shen Xin, moderated by the exhibition’s curators.

Mining the Deep Sea Frontier - Session 1
Organized by Inhabitants and Margarida Mendes
Saturday, February 17, 3pm

Catalogue Contributor Discussion
Thursday, March 15, 7pm

Mining the Deep Sea Frontier - Session 2
Organized by Inhabitants and Margarida Mendes
Thursday, April 12, 7pm

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About New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas. For more information, please visit: newmuseum.org.