Andra Ursuta: Alps

New Museum - New York

By Kim Power

The spring exhibit “Andra Ursuta: Alps” at the New Museum in New York City feels very much like an abandoned set design from the original Star Trek (1966) series, empty of actors to bring to life a room of props. The entrance to the installation is guarded by two identical sentries, marble statues (made in China) of an unidentified Roma woman deported from Paris which are decorated with vests embellished with copper pennies and Romanian 5 bani coins (Commerce Exterieur Mondial Sentimental, 2012). Ursuta herself is of Romanian descent but relocated to the United States to study while still in high school. Having received her BA from Columbia University in art history and visual art in 2002, Ursuta has exhibited at the 55^th International Venice Biennale (2013) in Venice, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2014), and in the 13^th Biennial of Lyon in France (2015) as well as galleries in Germany, England and the United States.

“Andra Ursuta: Alps” (installation view), 2016. Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

Alps (2016), white towering walls of aqua resin and fiberglass mesh, wood, urethane and pigment supported by aluminum girders, mimics indoor gym rappelling walls. Randomly attached to the walls are disembodied penises of all sizes, flaccid or erect, cast in resin and attached by bolts and grommets, in an assorted rainbow of bright colors which act as a camouflage or diversion tactic, disguising the deeper interpretation that this is some sort of twisted trophy wall of an unnamed atrocity. Accompanying these protrusions, the wall also sports the bony cavities of eye and nose sockets meant to act as virtual toe holds for the intrepid climber. Here and there seemingly fossilized bones of human beings subsumed by these monolithic barriers surface at varying heights and configurations. The randomness of the objects both protruding from and inset in the wall gives off an air of insouciance that cuts off any possible connection to empathy or horror despite it’s obvious attempt to shock, supplying the nonplussed observer with a banal and empty experience.

Mops made of silicone molds of cow’s tongues lean against the walls at various corners of the installation (Floor Licker, 2014) furthering speculation that some sort of punishment for crimes has taken place here, much like the cutting out of tongues in ancient times. Scattered throughout this artificial environment, nonmatching chairs support irregular geometric shapes, anthropomorphized by their seated position and various displays of teeth, bones and bony cavities. A carry-over from Ursuta’s Whites exhibition shown at the Kunsthalle Basel in 2015, the figures appear to be an extension of the same visual language used in Alps, giving bodily form to the horrors embedded within the surrounding walls. The artist has inserted herself into the narrative with the inclusion of a boneless full-body self-portrait lying on the museum floor. Crush (2011) is cast in urethane and covered in cloudy white pools of resinous material meant to symbolize semen. Hidden away in a corner of the exhibit, the possibly more powerful association of this figure with the wall of penises is easily disregarded.

Painted in gunmetal grey, Scarecrow (2015), an emblematic stuffed version of an eagle mounted on a basketball backboard adds political commentary to this conflation of objects. Are we meant to interpret these images: a raped woman, penises of castrated men and tongue mops as a cathartic expression of internalized rage given visual voice? Are the images of expulsed Roma women along with the towering wall a timely allegory for current issues of immigration and exclusion? Perhaps the answer is all of the above. Ursuta’s predilection for the darker side of political commentary is evident, however, the finer details of the message are unclear, rendering the impact of the exhibition impotent.

(April 27 - June 19, 2016)

Kim Power is a Bronx-based mixed-media artist and freelance writer. A graduate of the New York Academy of Art (2014), she regularly contributes to The Brooklyn Rail and Arte Fuse art blog.

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