Martine Syms. “The African Desperate”. Film Screening with Artist Talk

Haus der Kunst, in cooperation with MUBI, presents the German premiere of artist and filmmaker Martine Syms’s debut feature film, The African Desperate. The film follows twenty-four hours in the life of African-American artist Palace Bryan (played by Diamond Stingily) as she graduates from an MFA program at a prestigious art school in upstate New York. Amidst an idyllic backdrop and a night of debauchery, Palace’s encounters with her all-white professors and privileged fellow students are marked by admiration, incomprehension and isolation in equal measure. The film, sometimes inspired by Syms’s experiences and interspersed with numerous cameo appearances, sketches a satirical picture of the two-faced art system with its questionable institutions of knowledge production.

In her multidisciplinary practice comprising film, video, installation, performance and writing, Martine Syms examines representations of Blackness and the impact of digital media on everyday life. Syms’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Tate Modern, amongst others. She has received numerous awards, including the Creative Capital Award, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the United States Artists Fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation Award and the Future Fields Art Prize. In addition, she is part of the band Aunt Sister, hosts “Double Penetration,” a monthly show on NTS Radio, and is the founder of Dominica Publishing.

The African Desperate will be shown in English with German subtitles (OmU). The artist talk will be held in English.

A collaboration between MUBI and Haus der Kunst München.