Barbara Kruger, Untitled (No Comment), 2020. Three-channel video installation (color, sound; 9:25 minutes). Dimensions variable. Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund and Anonymous Art Acquisition Fund.
Wu Tsang is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who combines narrative and documentary techniques to explore fluid identities, marginalized histories, and whimsical worlds. After first presenting her work in Art in the Age of the Internet: 1989 to Today (2018), the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston organized Wu Tsang: Of Whales (2024), Tsang’s first solo exhibition in her home state of Massachusetts
Across Tsang’s practice, she frequently features a recurring cast of friends from her expansive artistic community, which is true of her 2015 film Girl Talk. In the video, Tsang captures the poet and scholar Fred Moten dancing and twirling in a meadow in soft drag, or a subtle performance in traditionally feminine clothing and makeup. Moten’s performance is accompanied by Josiah Wise’s (a.k.a. serpentwithfeet) rendition of “Girl Talk,” a 1960s jazz standard composed and written by Neal Hefti and Bobby Troup (respectively) for the biopic Harlow (1965). Troup’s original lyrics perpetuate a misogynistic view of women and their interpersonal talk with each other (hence the pejorative “girl talk”), belittling such as mere gossip and frivolity. Moten, however, specifically choose Betty Carter’s 1969 version of the song, in which she rewrites the lyrics to empower women’s performance of the piece (e.g., referring to women: from “the weaker sex, the speaker sex” to “we, the weaker sex; we, the speaker sex”). With open arms, Moten improvisationally dances to the subversive rendition while wearing white ribbons, studded jewelry, and a purple velvet cloak. Playfully unsettling traditional categories of gender norms, Tsang is also interested in pushing the conventions of filmmaking media writ large. Tsang recorded Girl Talk on an iPhone, which was a radical act for a filmmaker in 2015, only six years after iPhones were video-compatible. The four-minute video embraces imperfect resolution and the instability of the handheld iPhone camera. In Girl Talk, Tsang choreographs a blurred reality by pushing the boundaries of traditional gender tropes and between the role of camera, subject, and viewer.