David and venus

Exhibition text by reina takeuchi

Lucy Nguyên-Hunt and Keemon Williams’ collaboration Venus and David is a visceral performative video in which the artists adorn themselves with so-called traditional garb, all in white. Referencing ethnographic documentation and archival portraiture, Nguyên-Hunt and Williams transform themselves into statues belonging to an unknown institution, enacting conventional postures and embodying what it means to be a living archive. Voiceovers of the two artists accompanying the work echo typical educational vernacular, an omnipresent first-person narrative from the perspectives of the ‘documented’, discussing poetically rich territories of national pride, primitivism and caucasity - “I’m rethinking how I know myself, the more I become aware of how colonised I am... I’m finally recovering from my amnesia” on the gallery’s architecture. These works speak to nostalgia, the past, what haunts, but also a sense of inauthenticity. What were archives of the past - wunderkammers (cabinets of curiosities) and archival documentation - have now become IGTV videos and reels. Both artists depict how traditions, examinations of past histories and connectivity are shifting with the advent of new technologies and new methods of storytelling.

david and venus for ‘old haunts’ presented by Anthem ARI, metro arts

June 2021