With my left arm I can unscrew a mason jar and take a handful of legumes, whilst my right arm operates my iMac. I can water my plants with the showerhead whilst gazing out my single window, the alleyway has flooded once again. My entire wardrobe fits neatly onto one wall and I only need to raise myself from my swivel chair to climb into my mezzanine bed. Cleaning is minimal when space comes at a premium. Canned like a soft drink contemporary living isn’t so much a suppression of freedom as a physical reminder that productivity is the highest virtue.
Constructed around Joshua Citarella’s 20 Interviews (2020), a research project commissioned by Rhizome, a series of hi-resolution interior scenes articulate a thorough investigation into Gen Z online political spaces and ways in which their inhabitant meme posters imagine their futures, for better or worse. Often displayed as life-sized photographic tableaux, Citarella’s images compose hundreds of individual images, painstakingly arranged through digital editing software. The density of semiotic information recalls the highest moments of classical portraiture, from the complex navigational tricks of Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) or Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), in which every object intentionally develops contextual information.
Originally a three and a half metre dibond print, Citarella’s SWIM a Few Years From Now (2017) is experienced for the first time as a three-dimensional environment in The Terminal (2021). Rolled to form a tight cylinder, the claustrophobic conditions of the compacted studio apartment are magnified, becoming a cruel analogue to rising property prices in New York that have driven people to increasing compact living in the four years since the work was first shown.
Topped with a tinned can lid, this iteration of SWIM a Few Years From Now shown within the 360° film is completed with a nod towards the commercialisation of the individual. A life and everything that it accrues, is shown to be a disposable commodity, handled and discarded by forces that can reach around and crush it.
Themes of claustrophobia and the collapse of empire are further expressed in a new series of prints, which mark the first time Citarella has produced work using the heat activated printing technique of dye sublimation. In the still life Fully Atomized Side Gig Precariat Cutscene I (2021), a fraction of an accommodation is visible teasing the viewer to piece together an incomplete picture of it’s inhabitant. An alarm clock on top a short storage locker implies a utilitarian style of living, whilst the miniature hose and strawberry plant confer a level of self reliance and attentiveness. In Bow Drill with Compass and Electric Engine (2019) and Stone Knife with Car Adapter and Boxed Rations (2019) we can make out a tire and a wheel arch, deciphering that these fragmented domestic scenes are situated within a converted vehicle, a symbol of freedom collapsing into subsistence living. And finally, looking outwards, Use-Value Urban Repurposing Cutscene I (2021) populates an abandoned street with surveillance technologies and interactive terminals, stressing an urban environment turned into ultimate panopticon, where every action is quantified.
Joshua Citarella (b. 1987) lives and works in New York City. He is an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. Through a research led practice, he addresses memetic imagery and emergent political ideologies, his 20 Interviews survey of Gen Z commissioned by Rhizome resulted in life-sized photographic tableaux visualised interiors young meme posters imagined for themselves. Solo exhibitions include: Left Futures, Bas Fisher Invitational, Miami (2021); Forward-Facing Politics, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, D.C (2019); and Someone Who Isn’t You, High Pictures, New York City (2017). His work is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands; and the Hood Museum of Art in the U.S.
The Terminal: Human Shaped Whole
directed by: Jason Isolini
featuring: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ian Bruner, Joshua Citarella, Jessica Evans, James Irwin, Claire Jervert, Kakia Konstantinaki, Angeline Meitzler, Erin Mitchell and Neale Willis
curated by: Off Site Project
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Joshua Citarella .