For her latest exhibition at 1646 (The Hague), Shana Moulton presented a set of five videos in the rear exhibition space, while turning the front space into a neopsychedelic waiting room. With this sculptural installation, the artist moves beyond questions of the importance of the medium, a debate rendered obsolete by the spread of online media. Within the exhibition, she plays Cynthia: her naïve alter-ego who uncritically considers the promises of well-being coming from nearly every corner, from the food industry to yoga and meditation. Through a contemporary syncretism that blends a return to origins, primitivism and mass culture icons like Shakira and Dannon Yogurt, Cynthia/Shana follows an initiation rite that is both introspective and absurd. Like her mock-astrological biography, her work is future-oriented while also englobing humanity’s past, mistakes included. Although the artist presents parts of her body as floating objects, she claims no kinship with the menacing concept of “posthumanism”. Instead, a more positive vision of coexistence arises in her work. Shana Moulton’s power is that of all great artists: she takes bits and pieces from the present in order to take a vital step back – and avoids falling into clichés and conventions through the critical distance that forms the core of her work, though not always in the most obvious of ways.

Text by Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani taken from Crash 70 The Art Issue, December 2014

Anémochories, a Shana Moulton exhibition from February 2nd to September 11th, 2016 at Palais de Tokyo