Organized by Alex Klein, The Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE’60) Program Curator
ICA@50: Vishal Jugdeo (Leaves)Judgeo_001Judgeo_002Judgeo_003Judgeo_004Judgeo_005Judgeo_006
The work of Los Angeles-based artist Vishal Jugdeo (b. 1979 Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; lives Los Angeles, CA) often takes the form of theatrical videos and installations that deconstruct the conventions of narrative and enact the ritualized performance of language. In An Education in the Logic of the Leaves, a new work commissioned on the occasion of ICA’s 50th anniversary, Jugdeo ruminates on the slippage between document and fiction, memory and autobiographical experience, and the psychic and the physical. The video focuses on a dialogue between the artist and a young man, born in India and raised in the United States, as they traverse the city and discuss topics such as love, empathy, family, and the relationship between humans and animals. Traveling between spaces of fabrication and production and the exterior landscape of the city, a theme of displacement begins to emerge. This is further heightened by the installation, which frames observational footage that Jugdeo filmed while in India, literally enacting and questioning the old adage of the image as a “window onto the world.”
Joan Jonas/Stage SetsICA@50: Pleasing Artists And Publics Since 1963Joan Jonas, Vishal Jugdeo and David Dempewolf in Conversation / Joan Jonas/Stage Sets (1976)