Dara Birnbaum: Journey is a survey of the artist’s influential practice. This exhibition reviews the trajectory of Birnbaum’s penetrative interrogations of mass media during a period of time when technological transformations enabled seismic shifts in the mass consumption of information and entertainment. Over the past 45 years, Birnbaum’s work has consistently reclaimed power within and against dominant media paradigms that control access to information and transmit encoded ideologies.
The first and second floor galleries of the Miller ICA open on 20 August. The full exhibition will open on 23 September, with the premiere of a new work commissioned by the Miller ICA, Journey: In the Shadow of the American Dream (working title). For this commission, Birnbaum journeys across time by working with digitized 16 mm footage taken by her father during the earliest years of her life—a period when the narrative of the American Dream most strongly took hold.
The accompanying catalogue, Dara Birnbaum: Reaction, examines key works to explore how they have illuminated the media and culture at their moment of making and how they have continued to inform present critical thinking around “watching” technology and the dynamics of popular culture.
A book signing with the artist, coinciding with the premiere of her new commission during the opening weekend of the 58th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, will take place at the Miller ICA on Sunday, 25 September, from 11 am – 12 pm. Copies of the catalogue will be available for purchase.
Dara Birnbaum: Journey was curated by Elizabeth Chodos, the director of the Miller ICA, assistant professor of curatorial practice in the School of Art, and the public art curator for Carnegie Mellon University. The exhibition was generously supported by Carnegie Mellon University Alumna and Emeritus Trustee, Patti Askwith Kenner (MM, 1966), an indefatigable advocate for social causes; The Fine Foundation; and with major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Dara Birnbaum: Journey. Curated by Elisabeth Chodos
Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University
