(At Home) On Art and Peanut Butter: Artist Talk with Shana Moulton

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(At Home) On Art and Peanut Butter: Artist Talk with Shana Moulton

California-based artist Shana Moulton joins Hirshhorn associate curator of media and performance art Marina Isgro to discuss her ongoing video and performance series Whispering Pines and how her work has evolved in response to the global pandemic. Moulton’s performance and video work is built around her alter ago, a fictional character named Cynthia who spends most of her time alone at home. Begun in 2002, the Whispering Pines series was loosely inspired by the artist’s childhood growing up in a senior citizen mobile home park of the same name. Each episode features Cynthia wrestling with anxieties concerning her health, appearance, and purpose in life, as she desperately searches for meaning and healing through consumer goods and television. In 2018, Moulton and her collaborator, composer Nick Hallett, released a new, made-for-internet adaptation of the project for the New Museum’s digital portal. In recent months, with the rise of isolation due to COVID-19, the artists made all parts of the cross-platform opera Whispering Pines 10 viewable online for free and incorporated a test to make sure you pay attention: To access the finale of the work, you have to figure out a password based on clues within earlier segments. During a time of increasing physical separation, the democratization of this work points to the role of art and the internet in bringing people together. Perhaps this is Cynthia’s moment. Self-care has never been more important, on a global level. The creative potential of solitude is going to be completely rethought. – Nick Hallett, A Soap Opera About Solitude Indoors: Whispering Pines 10 Launches Online for Free

1 hr 9 min 9 sec