Cover image of the review
Ari Tampubolon, *Symposia: This show is dedicated to K-pop girl group, TWICE. I love you. Installation shot.* Photography: Aaron CV Rees

Ari Tampubolon, Symposia: This show is dedicated to K-pop girl group, TWICE. I love you.
  • Amelia Winata


21 Mar 2020
SEVENTH Gallery 5 Mar - 27 Mar 2020

Is it possible for institutional critique to be joyous? If we cast our minds back to some of art history’s seminal works of this “genre”—Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights—we recognise a humorous aspect in them; but the humour acts as a foil for an underlying pessimism. For many artists, the institution is treated as black and white; it is either good or bad. But the reality is that our relationships with institutions is far more complex. Roxane Gay, the American feminist writer, summed it up beautifully when she said that, despite the misogynistic content of the large majority of rap music, she could not help but love it. Ari Tampubolon, a queer artist of Indonesian descent, loves K-pop (South Korean Pop) and minimalism, despite both having some serious problems.

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