Martine Syms’s debut feature film tracks the final 24 hours of grad school for Palace Bryant, an MFA student in Upstate New York. Palace (played by frequent Syms collaborator Diamond Stingily) moves through a day that is constantly on the edge of unraveling as she navigates the complexities of friends, lovers, and the microaggressions of the white art academic establishment, with a cutting blend of humor and social commentary. 2022, US, DCP, 97 min.
A conversation with Martine Syms and J Wortham follows Friday’s screening.
Accessibility
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Bios
Martine Syms (US, b. 1988) holds an MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 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. She has had solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bergen Kunsthall, Secession, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Perez Art Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Tate Modern, and the Walker Art Center. Syms has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, MoMA PS1, and the Walker (Insights 2014 Design Lecture Series). The African Desperate, Syms’s debut feature film, premiered at MoMA/Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films festival and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
J Wortham (they/them) is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented toward healing justice and liberation. They are also a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and cohost of the podcast Still Processing. They occasionally publish thoughts on culture, technology, and wellness in a newsletter. Wortham is the editor of the visual anthology Black Futures (One World, 2020), a 2020 editor’s choice by the New York Times Book Review, along with Kimberly Drew. They are also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation for Penguin Press. Wortham mostly lives and works on stolen Munsee Lenape land, now known as Brooklyn, New York, and is committed to decolonization as a way of life.
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