4 September–7 December
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
Columbia University
Schermerhorn Hall, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10027
Enter Campus at 116th Street and Broadway
Hours: Wednesday through Saturday; 1–5pm
Public Programs
All events are free and will be held at The Wallach Art Gallery unless otherwise noted. Programming is presented in collaboration with Columbia University School of the Arts.
Thursday 17 October, 6–8:30pm
Selves on Screen: Antin’s Video
Presented in collaboration with Electronic Arts Intermix and Art21
A program of selected works explores the ways that video animated the selves, giving life to Antin’s interest in narrative, identity and historical play. With commentary by Emily Liebert, curator of Multiple Occupancy and Lori Zippay, Director of Electronic Arts Intermix.
Friday 8 November, noon–1pm
Curator’s tour
Multiple Occupancy curator Emily Liebert leads a walkthrough of the exhibition.
Saturday 9 November, 2–4pm
An Afternoon with Eleanora Antinova (a.k.a. Eleanor Antin)
Presented as part of Performa 13
Eleanor Antin reads and discusses excerpts, some unpublished, from the memoirs of her invented character, Eleanora Antinova, the African American ballerina of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
Tuesday 12 November, 6–7:30pm
Eleanor Antin in Conversation with Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade
Presented as part of Performa 13
This event will be held at Hunter College MFA Art Building, 205 Hudson Street
Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian members Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade discuss legacies of theatricality, character invention, and constructions of gender and race in their work.
Exhibition Overview
Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s Selves focuses on the videos, photographic series, drawings and installations that express the multiple personae, or “selves,” that Antin created and embodied between 1972 and 1991: a king, ballerinas, nurses and a film director. The issues the selves personify—destabilized identity, fictionalized history, transformation and archival slippage—reverberate in art of the present day.
Antin once declared, “I consider the usual aids to self-definition—sex, age, talent, time and space—as tyrannical limitations upon my freedom of choice.” Her selves were of different genders, races, professions, historical eras and geographic locations, and their manifestations were as diverse as their stories. Some characters were embodied by Antin and captured in photographs and on video; others had paper doll or puppet surrogates. At times, their existence was known only through the drawings, texts and films they had ostensibly left behind. Multiple Occupancy presents these materials, providing a singular opportunity to see the multifaceted expression of Antin’s gathered selves.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 128-page catalogue featuring texts by Emily Liebert, Huey Copeland, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, and Henry Sayre, and an interview with Eleanor Antin.
Artist bio
Eleanor Antin works in photography, performance, video, film, installation, drawing, and writing. Solo exhibitions include those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has performed internationally in venues including the Venice Biennale and the Sydney Opera House, and has written several books, most recently Conversations with Stalin (Green Integer). She is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, and is an emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.
About The Wallach Art Gallery
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery contributes to Columbia’s long-standing tradition of historical, critical and creative engagement in the visual arts. The Wallach presents exhibitions and related programming that reflect the diversity of interests and approaches to the arts at Columbia and embody the university’s high standards for research and instruction. Exhibitions strive to include the broad range of research and production undertaken by students and faculty, and to animate the university’s rich cultural resources.
