TENET / SI ONSITE: Sable Elyse Smith, Backbend

TENET
September 9–November 1, 2020

TENET is a time-based media program at Swiss Institute, following a summer when blockbusters never arrived at their intended destinations. Publicity for a highly anticipated movie suggested a story about a secret intelligence program to alter time. The movie poster tagline read: “TIME RUNS OUT,” but then time changed. 

In 2020, temporality was dramatically altered for many people across the globe—from pauses and delays, to the recursive forms of replay time associated with trauma and disaster, to the portals to alternative futures that appear to open up in moments of societal change. The works in TENET explore timelines as part of their intrinsic structure by using repetition, rewinding, speeding up, slowing down, and other forms of editing and reworking to transform existing materials. The program features works by Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Moyra Davey, Yu Honglei and Steffani Jemison.

Each work will be on view at SI for a week before returning for a second showing in the reverse order. 

SI Onsite: Sable Elyse Smith, Backbend, 2019
On view from September 9

As part of its ongoing SI ONSITE series of semi-permanent installations, Swiss Institute is pleased to present Backbend, an outdoor sculpture by New York-based artist Sable Elyse Smith. Installed on the building’s roof terrace, the work is part of a group of sculptures made from visitation tables commonly found in American prisons. Designed to host monitored conversations between incarcerated individuals and their visitors, the tables are intentionally constructed to inhibit privacy and contact. Low to the ground, they prevent items from being passed and hand-holding out of sight. In Backbend, Smith links five units together to form a low arch that conjures playground equipment, surveillance technology, and the physical contortion that gives the work its name. Using reconfiguration as a mode of resistance against the table’s intended function, Smith draws out the ambiguous affinities between architectures of confinement and play. 

Concurrent with this installation, and in advance of her curation of SI’s 2022 Architecture and Design exhibition, Smith is developing a digital magazine and vinyl mixtape that will unfold across three issues over the next year. The first issue, Fear, will launch in October and feature contributions by Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jessica Lynne, Jason Moran and Paul Pfeiffer. More details will be released in advance of the launch. 

Smith’s sculpture joins works by Mathis Altmann, John Armleder, Robert Barry, Latifa Echakhch, Gina Fischli, Christian Holstad, Cooper Jacoby, Gabriel Kuri, William Leavitt, Sam Lewitt, Nancy Lupo, Shawn Maximo, Shahryar Nashat, Raul de Nieves, Meret Oppenheim, Pamela Rosenkranz, TELFAR, Michael Wang, and Shirin Yousefi which are ongoing installations and interventions at SI.

SI Programming is made possible in part with public funds from Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council; the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Main sponsors include LUMA Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Friends of SI. SI gratefully acknowledges Swiss Re as SI ONSITE Partner, Vitra as Design Partner, Crozier Fine Arts as Preferred Shipping Art Logistics Partner, and SWISS as Travel Partner.