OMAHA, NE.- Doug Aitken’s migration (empire), 2008, addresses the problematic question of what happens when human and animal worlds collide. In this video, shot on location in motel rooms across the United States, animals are removed from their natural habitats and placed in environments built for the purpose of human mobility. The latest exhibition in
Joslyn Art Museum’s Riley Contemporary Artists Project Gallery, migration (empire) opened Saturday, June 4, and continues through September 5. The exhibition is included in free general Museum admission.
migration (empire) finds moments of humor, but the overall tone is somber and unnerving. These animals have not only been contained but are being subjected to the same monotony to which humans willingly accede.
As Aitken’s surrealist vignettes unfurl over the course of twenty-four minutes, the animals quickly revert to their natural instincts: a beaver finds its way to the cascade of running water in the bathtub; an unruly bison topples furniture with its massive head; a cougar tears the bed apart. In an especially poignant moment, a horse seems to watch his wild counterparts canter gracefully across the landscape on a television screen. Aitken’s equine subject slowly turns its head to face the camera, as if understanding the loss of freedom that came with domestication.
An epilogue to Joslyn’s recent exhibition Go West! Art of the American Frontier from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Aitken’s migration (empire) reflects on the U.S. history of westward expansion and its impact on the landscape, while also considering popular notions of what constitutes the American West. Aitken explains: “It’s almost like a survey of the landscape . . . It’s a cinematic portrayal of an idea that’s somewhat fictional, futuristic, yet set within our current reality.”
Doug Aitken was born in Redondo Beach, CA, in 1968. He studied at Marymount College in Palos Verdes, CA, before completing his BFA at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA, in 1991. Aitken’s work has been featured at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Turkey; and Serpentine Gallery, London. His work was included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1997 and 2000, and in fall 2016, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will open a major retrospective of his career. Among Aitken’s many distinctions are the International Prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale, the 2012 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, and the 2013 Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts.
