Art in the Age of Anxiety

“De Beauvoir,” Trevor Paglen, Sharjah Art Foundation. Photos: Danko Stjepanovic
“De Beauvoir,” Trevor Paglen, Sharjah Art Foundation. Photos: Danko Stjepanovic

For 2020’s spring exhibitions at Sharjah Art Foundation, I designed the exhibition spaces for “Art in the Age of Anxiety,” an exploration of contemporary art in our current times continuously reshaped by the virtual world. I sought to create interiors that seem to respond to the themes pursued by the curator Omar Kholeif. Below is an excerpt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is printed in the show’s first gallery. The exhibition has been closed because of the coronavirus, but it is expected to have a limited reopening too.

For an upcoming book related to the exhibition, I’ve written a short text about the exhibition design: “How to House a Minotaur or A Design Manual for the Age of Anxiety.” Here is a link to more information on the publication.

Here is more about the exhibition’s reopening.

Great Daedalus of Athens was the man

That made the draught, and formed the wondrous plan;

Where rooms within themselves encircled lie,

With various windings, to deceive the eye.

………………………………………………

Such was the work, so intricate the place,

That scarce the workman all its turns could trace;

And Daedalus was puzzled how to find

The secret ways of what himself designed.

Ovid, Metamorphoses