2022/09/02

Gruesome Deaths of her Digital Avatars an Act of Black Joy and Freedom, Martine Syms Says

● 02/09/2022
“Seppuku with a chef’s knife. Crippling, fatal allergies. Diarrhea so explosive she rockets into the sky like a rag doll, then dies from the fall. Then, somehow, she gets up and keeps walking.”
– Writer Travis Diehl, recounting the gruesome deaths Martine Syms’s digital avatar is subjected to in the video piece DED (2021). “I think it’s kind of funny, but I understand how people do not,” the American media artist acknowledges. “I’m using a signifier, Blackness, which for some people can connote serious pain. But I see it as a real space of joy and freedom.”
New York Times
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