Whitney Lynn’s “The Siren” on Remote Access

The gallery is pleased to announce the launch of our latest screening for Remote Access: The Siren (2019) by Whitney Lynn. In The Siren, a mermaid-costumed protagonist anxiously scales the crumbling remains of a grafiti-covered bunker, perched precariously on a coastal cliff known as Devil’s Slide. As a low frequency audio score rumbles, the “siren” struggles to gain footing, bound by a garment that combines an image of kitsch seduction with an unsettling vulnerability.
Whitney Lynn mines artifacts from art history and popular culture to reframe narratives of recognizable objects, images, and events. Utilizing sculpture, photography, drawing, performance, video, and public projects, her work moves between social and institutional critique, questioning murky histories and the seductiveness of familiarity. Recent projects include Forbidden Illusions, a suite of anaglyph prints exploring artists’ depictions of forbidden knowledge, and Sirens, Silencers, Mufflers and Mutes, a solo exhibition of jacquard tapestries tracing the transformation of the mythological Siren.

Born on Williams Air Force Base, Lynn attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has held faculty appointments at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and SFAI, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts at the University of Washington. Lynn’s work has been presented internationally at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Neon Museum, Las Vegas; Torrance Art Museum, CA; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the de Young Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Exit Art, NYC; and Centro Bahía in Cuba.
The Siren will be on view through April 5 – do not miss this opportunity to view Lynn’s mesmerizing video in advance of her Media Room presentation in concert with Julie Heffernan’s Hotheads, opening April 18.