ART21: ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: Friends & Strangers

By Jennifer Robinson / Web Producer

Published October 18, 2023 at 2:38 PM PDT

Miranda July in a scene from ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY "Friends and Strangers" — Miranda July in a scene from ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY "Friends & Strangers"

Friday, Oct. 20, 2023 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS App + Encore Sunday, Oct. 22 at 2:30 p.m. on KPBS 2

ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY "Friends & Strangers” showcases the dynamic stories of artists Linda Goode Bryant, Miranda July, Christine Sun Kim, and Cannupa Hanska Luger.

“Each artist featured in ‘Friends & Strangers’ has been considered an outsider at some point in their life,” says Tina Kukielski, Susan Sollins Executive Director and Chief Curator of Art21. “Each one also possesses that magical ability to connect with the world around them through art. I hope this episode teaches those watching that art has the power to help us raise our voice and find our community.”

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Four contemporary artists look inside and outside their immediate circles to find emotional connections and build community. This film showcases playful and poignant sculptures, performances, and more. Includes celebrated filmmaker Miranda July.

Resisting the growing isolation of life in the United States, the artists in “Friends & Strangers” imagine new stories to tell about themselves and their communities and discover empowerment in their artistic identities. In the episode, celebrated filmmaker, performer, and writer Miranda July embraces the risks of art-making while staging an impromptu performance at a gas station in Los Angeles.

Artist Miranda July walks through a busy gas station while uncoiling a roll of white ribbon, asking strangers to hold onto a part of it but feel free to let go whenever they need to. The ribbon tangles and wraps around the entire gas station. In the voiceover, July discusses how taking risks is her comfort zone and not being afraid to do so gives her a superpower to work freely.

Christine Sun Kim adroitly navigates the hearing-dominant art world in a series of talks, exhibitions, and openings, revealing the biting humor and political commitment that fuels her signature drawings.

As a muralist paints artist Christine Sun Kim’s site-responsive project at the Queens Museum, “Time Owes Me Rest Again,” Kim explains the ideas behind the piece. She used echoing motion lines to represent the five words in the title in American Sign Language, conveying the unease and fatigue many felt during the COVID-19 pandemic and the persisting inequity between Deaf and hearing communities.

Renowned for his interventions at the 2016 Standing Rock protests, Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold artist Cannupa Hanska Luger engages indigenous and non-indigenous audiences with interactive projects that acknowledge ugly colonial histories and direct a path forward to an optimistic future.

Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger started a series of works called “Future Ancestral Technologies,” rejecting the romantic historical narrative of native people that their culture is ancient and primitive. Through science fiction and speculative fiction presented with sculptures, videos, regalia, and performance, Luger imagines how our culture shifts in the future and what it will mean to be indigenous.

Lastly, Linda Goode Bryant recalls the communal energy and anarchic spirit of her legendary New York City art space Just Above Midtown, recently celebrated by one of the most venerable art institutions in the country, the Museum of Modern Art.

Illustrated with archival images from the 70s and 80s, Linda Goode Bryant tells the story of how she realized artists of color were not given the opportunities to exhibit their work at the time and decided to take the initiative to establish the art gallery, Just Above Midtown, which fostered a vibrant artists community and gave artists the space to exchange ideas and experiment with new work.

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Watch Episode 1 "Everyday Icons" and Episode 2 "Bodies of Knowledge"

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ART21: ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: Friends & Strangers

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