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SHE MAD: Bitch Zone

Martine Syms

2020 00:10:50 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video

Description

She Mad is an episodic project that uses fragments from the sitcom format to explore the sign of blackness in the public imagination. It is a way to think about surveillance, visibility, and the gulf between lived experience and representation. The show follows Martine, a graphic designer who wishes she were an important artist. She is an overachieving stoner who lives in Hollyweird.

In this episode, Bitch Zone, and innocuous comment triggers a flashback to Summer 2000 when she was a camper at BZone, a week-long empowerment program for teenage girls founded by a supermodel.

About Martine Syms

Martine Syms obtained a MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (NY) (2017) and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL) (2007). Syms has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor and social commentary. Using a combination of video, installation and performance, often interwoven with explorations into technique and narrative, Syms examines representations of blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions. Syms’s research-based practice frequently references and incorporates theoretical models concerning performed or imposed identities, the power of the gesture, and embedded assumptions concerning gender and racial inequalities.