Peggy Ahwesh

Permanent Collection of The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Washington DC

Microscope is very pleased to announce the acquisition of edition 2/5 of Peggy Ahwesh’s video work She Puppet by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. 

The work has just been preserved in 4K and has not previously been editioned. The She Puppet Sourcebook — a 32-page book created by Ahwesh and containing the theoretical, bibliographical, and visual references used by the artist during the making of the video — is also included as part of the work.

"Re-editing footage collected from months of playing Tomb Raider, Ahwesh transforms the video game into a reflection on identity and mortality. Trading the rules of gaming for artmaking, she brings Tomb Raider’s cinematic aesthetics to the foreground, and shirks the pre-programmed “mission” of its heroine, Lara Croft. Ahwesh acknowledges the intimate relationship between this fictional character and her player. Moving beyond her implicit feminist critique of the problematic female identity, she enlarges the dilemma of Croft’s entrapment to that of the individual in an increasingly artificial world."

Currently on view at Centre Pompidou-Metz

Centre Pompidou-Metz
Worldbuilding: Video Games & Art in the Digital Era
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
June 10, 2023 - January 15, 2024
More info HERE

Kamari Carter

"Perpetual Motion"
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
Curated by Barbara London
December 6, 2023 - May 31, 2024
More info HERE

Microscope is very pleased to announce that Kamari's video "Ligature/Signature" is appearing in the exhibition "Perpetual Motion" curated by Barbara London for the Pe?rez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) featuring "ten moving-image artists exploring the transforming discipline of video art," and launching December 6th at the museum and on PAMMTV.

Carter describes his works as: "A video that shows a close-up scene of hands grasping a strand of rope and trying to spell a name. Striving to undo the rope’s tension and, symbolically, horrific histories, the action pointing to the futility of trying to do so. In the video, the sound is stark—one hears the friction of the rope and the sound of it dropping onto a surface. Off-screen, someone throws more rope at the two unidentified hands, increasing the level of struggle. The visual was accompanied by a mildly unsettling soundscape: hard rope landing on a table, skin rubbing against twine." 

Kamari Carter (b. 1992) is a New York-based artist working primarily with sound, video, installation, and performance. His practice circumvents materiality and familiarity through a variety of recording and amplification techniques to investigate notions such as space, systems of identity, oppression, control, and surveillance. Driven by the probative nature of perception, Carter’s work seeks to expand narrative structures through sonic stillness. His work has been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence, RI; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY; Wave Hill, New York; Fridman Gallery, New York; and Automata Arts, Los Angeles, among others, and has been featured in publications including Artnet, Flash Art, and Whitewall, among others. Carter holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a MFA from Columbia University.