Funded by the Mellon Public Curatorial Expression Program and curated by Lauren Siegel, Sarah Then Bergh, Marie Lambert, and Romain Pasquer, Between Nothingness and Infinity asks: What are the consequences of living on the brink? What new affects appear within this accidental present of living in uncertain times, one which embodies unease and nervousness? The Martinican psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, offers a starting point through which to think about the contention currently facing our times—that of futurities, uncertain—as we inhabit a present that no longer promises a future. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon decries, “Not responsible for my acts, at the crossroads between Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep.” The urgent and yet impossible task of enacting himself as a subject serves as the exhibit’s theoretical touchstone for its insight into the human condition and its ability to unsettle assumptions about the cultural “origins” of things, insisting instead on a relational, itinerant view of aesthetics. Between Nothingness and Infinity parses the artistic forces of resistance, where the stubborn promise of infinite possibilities can only belong to the future, no matter how uncertain.

View the exhibition, featuring paintings by Gustavo Nazareno and a three-day performance by Oupa Sibeko, in the Wing Gallery in the Johnson Museum of Art from Sep 29-Dec 17, 2022 from 10a-5p Tue-Sun. 

2022 Cornell Biennial
Sponsored by the Cornell Council for the Arts and curated by Timothy Murray, the 2022 Cornell Biennial "Futurities, Uncertain" features exhibitions, installations, and performances by 23 international and 17 Cornell-based artists. Free and open-to-the-public events will rotate on the Cornell Ithaca campus and the Cornell Tech campus in New York City from July through December 2022. The full list of participants, along with the calendar of 2022 Cornell Biennial events, will be updated in real time at cca.cornell.edu/biennial.