Martine Syms: Hacking Art, Pirating the Institution, Glitching Reality
I discovered Martine Syms' work during her Total exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, an experience that showcases how images and social networks are transforming installation art. Using everyday objects, Syms brings art closer to the public, breaking down barriers between institutions and spectators. In this immersive installation, she once again demonstrated her ability to create a dialogue between Black culture and power structures.
Martine Syms: Subverting the Image, Short-Circuiting Power
Martine Syms, “Goo”, Sadie Coles HQ, Londres, 2023, par Dominique Croshaw
Martine Syms captures the chaos of our time with razor-sharp acuity. Born in 1988 in Los Angeles, she grew up just steps from Hollywood, absorbing the language of screens as a second nature. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bard College, she dissects pop culture, new media, and the African American legacy to extract a raw, biting, and hyper-connected aesthetic.
From 2007 to 2012, she co-directed Golden Age, a hybrid art space in Chicago—an electrifying laboratory where visual arts, performance, and publishing collided. By 2015, she had exploded onto the international scene: the New Museum Triennial, Notes on Gesture (a gem of analysis on body language and identity), and a collaboration with Willo Perron & Associates on Kanye West’s speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. In 2017, she joined the Whitney Biennial and created Projects 106 at MoMA, where she fused artificial intelligence, video, and deconstructed storytelling.
Through Dominica Publishing, her publishing house, Syms continues to break boundaries, exploring Black culture through a critical, pop, and radical lens. Her glitched-out imagery—blending sharp humor with social critique—has materialized in major exhibitions such as Ugly Plymouths (2019, Graham Foundation) and SLIP (2020, Basel Social Club). In 2022, she stepped behind the camera with The African Desperate, a feverish and corrosive feature film presented at Rotterdam.
A fashion enthusiast, Syms has directed commercial films for Prada, Nike, and, most notably, a 30-second spot featuring a pregnant Rihanna for Pharrell’s debut at Louis Vuitton Homme in 2023. She is internationally recognized for her video work. In 2025, Syms took over Lafayette Anticipations in Paris with Total, her first solo show in France. A hypnotic immersion where art and concept store aesthetics fuse into a fragmented manifesto of late capitalism—where desire and merchandise blur together in a hyper-stylized dystopia.
Total: From Architecture to the Heart of the Institution
Martine Syms, “Total”, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, 2025
With Total, presented at Lafayette Anticipations, Martine Syms shatters the boundaries between art, commerce, and spectacle, taking direct aim at Rem Koolhaas' modular architecture. What if the museums of tomorrow resembled shopping temples? The idea feels dystopian, yet far from implausible. Syms seizes it head-on and pushes it to the extreme: a gallery that flirts with the concept store, an exhibition space that breathes like a boutique—where art is sold, displayed, and exchanged in a hypnotic ballet of manufactured signs and desires.
This electrifying installation questions the place of art in a world oversaturated by visual capitalism. Syms deconstructs the mechanics of symbols that turn art into mere merchandise, mimicking and distorting the codes of commercial branding. Fake storefront or real critique? Total plays with this ambiguity, trapping the viewer in a hall of mirrors where fascination and discomfort collide.
This tension is at the core of the project: between the utopia of liberated art and the reality of the structures that contain it. True to her sharp-edged approach, Syms exploits these contradictions to craft an immersive experience that forces us to reconsider not only the role of art but also our own relationship with consumerism and imagery. In a world where everything is for sale, what remains irreducible?
Martine’s World
« The image is a battlefield. Every image is a matter of power. »
She Mad: Reinventing the Image, Deconstructing the Label
« I am fascinated by the power of popular culture. It shapes our perceptions, and if it can do that, then art can also liberate us. »
With She Mad (2015–2022), Martine Syms explores the tensions between self-image and the image imposed by society through “Martine,” a young stoner and graphic designer in Los Angeles, torn between ambition and disillusionment. This project, made up of brief, clip-like episodes, features the artist's alter ego navigating the thousand pitfalls of contemporary daily life. These small moments, as unepic as they are immensely comedic, quickly seem scripted by the entertainment industry, creating a sense of déjà-vu both in the situations and their narration.
Far from merely subverting Hollywood, Syms reinvents the visual codes of cinema and advertising to offer an ironic and liberating vision of Black identity. Her approach blends humor and social critique to deconstruct the stereotypes of pop culture. She Mad also marks a creative partnership with friends like Diamond Stingily, contributing to a redefinition of the Black artist's image, far from institutional expectations.
In essence, Martine Syms taps into this omnipresent media texture, which constitutes the collective unconscious of a connected humanity, to transform it into the raw material for her art.
The African Desperate : Black Identity as a Cinematic Playground
« For me, art is a form of self-exploration and confrontation with invisible structures. »
In The African Desperate (2022), Martine Syms unflinchingly delves into her experience at Bard College, an institution where social and racial barriers still define "success" and belonging. The film is a sharp satire of the quest for recognition in an art world where Black culture struggles to carve out space. By portraying a fictional version of herself, Syms demonstrates how art, often created for and by white elites, becomes a battleground for the Black artist.
With an approach that is both offbeat and brutally personal, Syms deconstructs the very notion of artistic legitimacy within institutions blind to diversity. She exposes the invisibility of the Black artist, this foreign body within academic and creative spaces that never intended to include them. The film does not merely denounce; it offers a new form of representation, free from conventions and standardized expectations. By reinventing the rules of cinematic play, Syms poses a striking question: what if art wasn’t a space for validation, but an act of resistance?
« The problem with institutions is that they define us before we even have the chance to define ourselves. »
« Art is not an answer, it is a question. »
Artists like Martine Syms definitely have their place in contemporary French art. They shake (a lot) of norms, invite us to rethink the position of Afro-descendant artists, and push us to question a system where diversity is often pushed to the background. Their works are more than just a "spotlight"; they force us to reconsider how we think about art, identity, and culture. So, where are our own artists in France to shake us up too? If we truly want to understand the environment of Afro-descendant artists, it's high time we listen to those who don't just follow the rules, but who rewrite them, simply put.
Syms: What's Next?
Currently, her film The African Desperate is streaming on the MUBI platform. Additionally, on April 2, 2025, she will lead a lecture on artist Walter De Maria at Dia Chelsea in New York. She also plans to develop new immersive installations while continuing her reflection on the place of art in a world increasingly influenced by the dynamics of global capitalism. Her work continues to inspire and provoke, offering new perspectives for future generations.
Works by Martine Syms
2015 – Lessons: A video series exploring African American culture through fragments of language and images.
2016 – A Pilot for a Show About Nowhere: A video installation inspired by TV sitcoms and representations of African American life.
2017 – Incense, Sweaters & Ice: A feature film presented at MoMA, exploring surveillance, performance, and navigation in public space.
2018 – Shame Space: An immersive installation combining video and text, addressing the construction of digital identity and self-tracking.
2019 – Ugly Plymouths: A video exhibition examining language, performance, and social interaction in a contemporary context.
2020 – My Only Idol is Reality: A video work exploring pop culture and self-representation in the digital age.
2021 – Nite Life: A sound and video installation evoking the history of African American clubs and the relationship between music and collective memory.
2022 – The African Desperate: Her first feature film, a satire about the art world, presented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
2023 – Goo: An exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ addressing themes of transformation, fluidity, and visual representation.
2024 – Total at La Lafayette: An exhibition marking a new phase in her exploration of themes of representation, identity, and interaction with space.
