FOCUS: Jill Magid

January 21 - March 20,2022

From the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: "The FOCUS series is presented by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and features three solo exhibitions each year. Started in 2005, this series is committed to introducing visitors to emerging artists gaining worldwide acclaim and showing the work of esteemed mid-career artists previously under-recognized in the region. The FOCUS series is organized by Associate Curator Alison Hearst. FOCUS exhibitions are open to the public and are included in general Museum admission. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is pleased to present the exhibition FOCUS: Jill Magid, on view January 21–March 20, 2022. Throughout Jill Magid’s career, she has carried out extraordinary tasks for her projects. The Brooklyn-based artist inserts herself into established systems of control to engage them from within. As part of her approach to artmaking, she has trained as a spy, police officer, and journalist to be embedded in Afghanistan. Magid creates space within institutions of power where individual agency can flourish, ultimately destabilizing set rules and regulations in favor of new, more equitable relationships. For her exhibition at the Modern, Magid will show the film Tender Balance alongside related works that expand upon her 2020 Creative Time public artwork, Tender. As the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, the artist noticed how public figureheads often downplayed the number of lives lost in contrast to the country’s perceived economic toll—demonstrating a stark difference in value between people’s lives and that of the nation’s economy. For Tender, Magid disseminated newly minted 2020 pennies engraved on the edge with the phrase “The BODY WAS ALREADY SO FRAGILE.” The coins entered the public’s hands via bodegas scattered throughout New York City. Passages of these exchanges in the film Tender Balance underscore the daily, close human connections that turned rife with anxiety and fear throughout the pandemic. The film implies the narrowing path the coins led from the mint to the individual—a course not unlike that of a pathogen—ruminating on systems of circulation on both intimate and grand scales. For the next chapter of this project at the Modern, Magid will present a new body of work titled Labor Days, which expands upon Tender and Tender Balance. It includes drawings and sculptural installations, each from 2021. Labor Days turns its focus to labor and the essential workers that kept our economy, and society, afloat throughout COVID-19’s impact. In her bittersweet installation Bodega Flowers, Magid presents hundreds of fresh cut flowers evoking the ubiquitous displays outside of New York City bodegas—the same sites where the Tender pennies were distributed. The pandemic threatened many floral farmers’ businesses, and though the workers were deemed essential, the farms have not fully recovered. Jill Magid (b. 1973) is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, and filmmaker. She has shown extensively both nationally and internationally at institutions including Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Creative Time, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Dia Bridgehampton; Art in General, New York; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City; Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; and the New Museum, New York. She has participated in many important biennial exhibitions, including the Liverpool, Lyon, Bucharest, Singapore, Incheon, Gothenburg, and Performa Biennials, and Manifesta. Recent awards include the 2017 Calder Prize, a 2020 Creative Time Artist Commission, a 2021 VIA Art Fund Grant, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is in many public collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis."

Artist talk: March 01, 2021 | 6-7 pm
Tuesday Evenings at the Modern Lecture: Jill Magid

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, TX 76110
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